Jonathan R. Schmidt

Commuting to work: the sustainable way 2010

jschmidty — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 20:23:11 +0000

Here’s 2010 – sustainable ways to get to and from work.

Lost Soul Ultra

jschmidty — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 19:06:50 +0000

Well, I finally got off the waiting list for the Lost Soul Ultra 50k. So on September 11, 2010 I’ll be attempting to race through the coulees and enjoy the beautiful rugged prairie river valley in the city that I’m currently living in. Lethbridge is a beautiful city, but it’s beauty is not always appreciated or even seen by most people. There are great manmade parks (Henderson and Nicholas Sheran) and amazing natural parks in the river valley. Running through 50k of trails in the river valley should be pretty neat, as it’s one of the few races that I can literally run to.

30 things in 30 days

jschmidty — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 18:23:02 +0000

In light of my pending old age I’m proposing to do 30 things in 30 days following my 30th birthday on November 12th. I was trying to think of something that would make me feel young at-heart and would involve friends and family from around the world.

The catch is that you (my friends and family) will contribute the ideas of the 30 things I will do.

Here’s the plan:

Leading up to my birthday on November 12 I will be taking submissions of things I should do. I will then choose the best 30 things suggested and do one each day for 30 days (you may also suggest things that can be done once a day for 30 days). Here’s the criteria.

-Must involve the number 30
-Something that I can do in less than 1 hr
-Something that costs little or no money
-Something that is: challenging, comical or fun
-Can be done either once or once a day for 30 days

What will happen?

I will be posting the best (& worst) ideas on my website and facebook for people to keep track and vote if they so choose. I may choose to do the top voted thing (if it’s reasonable). On my birthday I will finalize the list and began completing the things. I will try to log and photo the things that I do also on my website and facebook page.

To submit your idea send an email to jon@schmidty.ca or post it on my facebook wall.

July biking

jschmidty — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 03:39:34 +0000

In July I calculated that I biked 375 km. I don’t have a bike computer, so this is an estimate based on online mapping.I biked a total of 16 days out of a possible of 19. Only three days I drove due to rain or other circumstances – overall a great month for biking!

It’s been interesting to note that my fastest times have dropped substantially. My ‘to work’ time has dropped from about 30 minutes to a record of about 25 minutes and averages between 25-30 minutes. My ‘from work’ time has dropped from around 35-40 minutes to a record of just under30 minutes, with averages in the low 30s. A big result of the dropped times is my increased fitness and skill tackling the ‘Lethbridge coulee’. Formerly I was taking about 10min to get up coulee on the westside, while now I have it down to around 5 min or under. It’s pretty exciting to feel so strong on the bike, although the bike ride isn’t long enough to test my real endurance, just mostly speed. I also find that my time to and from work can vary widely based on how I hit the stop lights. There’s a potential to wait about 5 minutes at all the stop lights, so it’s tough to really set a record speed unless I hit all the lights green.

Other interesting things to note

-I can now recognize most of the ‘regulars’ who walk, bike or run from the west side of Lethbridge each day
-I’ve talked about 5 different commuters at various times, sometimes for awhile, sometimes just to say hi. This is something I enjoy about biking that never happens in a car.
-Biking in the rain ain’t so bad as it seems and can be overcome, something that I thought was a major barrier to cycling
-Putting my canoe ‘dry bag’ into my pannier was an easy way to ‘waterproof’ my pannier
-My bike work remains one of the highlights of my daily work routine

pedaling off…

Biking to work

jschmidty — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 14:09:28 +0000

With the start of my new job in Lethbridge I’ve had the opportunity to bike to work. Since most of the other jobs that I’ve had were relatively close to where I lived this is the first time I’ve had to bike commute farther than a couple of kilometres. The total distance from our house to work is about 11km – not too far really. The only major obstacle is the massive coulee in Lethbridge, since we live on the westside of town, thus an eleven kilometre bike ride feels more like fifteen.

Here are some interesting things I’ve discovered during my rides to and from work:

-you are at the mercy of the weather, if it’s nice in the morning you still worry all day that it’s going to pour on the way home. Nature is much closer to you.

-Stop lights are at times a nice breather and other times a painful hindrance to a nice continuous bike ride.

-Some people are good drivers and some are not (but we all knew that before, didn’t we?)

-The bike infrastructure in Lethbridge is lacking (surprise surprise), although I wouldn’t be commuting to work without the Whoop-Up pedestrian bridge..props for that.

-When the wind isn’t blowing I can keep up with most vehicles in downtown Lethbridge

-Getting 22k of riding in during my regular routine feels great

-More people should bike. The majority of people at my workplace live less than 5k from work. Their excuses for not biking are quite weak (and they even admit it)

-It’s fun. Get on your bike.

Stats for May (for the Bighams out there):

Trips in May: 25

Total Possible trips: 40

Approx distance for each trip: 11k

Approx total distance for May: 275k

Approx. avg. time to work: 30 min

Approx. avg. time to home: 40 min (hill is bigger and wind stronger)

Approx. total carbon emissions saved if I used our Yaris (6.2L/100k): 39kg

Carbon emissions if I drove an H3 4×4 hummer (14L/100k): 83kg

Total carbon emissions to fly from Calgary to Toronto: 365kg

Carbon emissions remaining to offset upcoming flight: 320kg (wow, that’s a lot!)

Why do socieities collapse?

jschmidty — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 03:16:55 +0000

I came across Jared Diamond’s online lecture about his book Collapse while searching for his book online for my Masters thesis. The lecture is an excellent summary about why societies collapse due to ecological destruction. Diamond links ecological collapse to total social, economic and cultural collapse. His book Collapse was a best-seller and for good reason. It not only highlights our need to understand our ecological systems, but also how our social and economic systems support an ignorance to the destruction of our ecological systems, which ultimately underpin our whole society.

My Video Resume

jschmidty — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 01:02:40 +0000

After my previous post you’ve probably all been waiting for my own video resume. Well, after compiling a summary of my awards, work experience and creative arts portfolio I have a finished my video resume. The video resume is meant to be a supplement to my paper resume. The video resume does a much better job at displaying the creativity and innovation from which I work than a paper resume. Additionally, it shows a bit of my personality, including my vision and passion for municipal planning. The intended audience is future employers, mainly in regard to municipal planning related jobs.

To view my video resume go to:
http://www.jon.schmidty.ca/videoresume

Video Resumes

jschmidty — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 20:51:52 +0000

“I don’t think you can communicate creatively and attitude through a resume.” ~Employer

Being in the job hunt has made me think deeper about how to present myself and what I’ve accomplished. I’ve also been thinking over a recent interview question about ‘being innovative’ that I felt I answered poorly, despite having done numerous ‘innovative’ and creative things in my life. The idea of a video montage highlighting the creative things that I’ve done came to mind, so I ‘googled’ “video resume” and tons of stuff came up. It turns out that YouTube has made the video resume a hit. There are tons of video resumes online and I would consider most of them pretty poor in quality. A few of them I’d consider worthy of actually being a video. Afterall, what’s the point of doing a video if everything you say is on your resume? Maybe people just like to show their pretty face on a video, but really, if you’re not going to show the graphic and visual things that you’ve done, why do it in a video? Also, if you’re just going to talk to a camera for five minutes, I”m sure the employer would rather just meet you in person. The other thing that struck me was a video on video resume etiquette, which bascially emphasized doing a boring video with miminal risk or interesting features. I think video resumes should be creative, have some flare and break out the traditional resume stereotypes. Resumes are inherently non-creative. Every resume workshop I’ve been to has emphasized not to do anything unusual on your resume. I would like to hope that a video resume would allow people to break out of the old molds and be free to express oneself in whatever way they feel suits the situation. Below I’ve highlighted some of what I consider the good and the bad of my brief browsing of video resumes on youtube.

CBS News on Video Resumes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kz9AODQkmiM

Good:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cOcOyb1mdA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoodirGsX-o
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7CIHLoATwc

Boring:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Za8F7tdR2UY

Pointless:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xb6Fdze9Ds

Funny:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6dU83p0gZo

Running across Canada

jschmidty — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 21:30:48 +0000

Recently some CBC producers went on my website www.trailrunner.ca and uploaded a unique running opportunity in the forum section. The producers are seeking 12 runners who will re-trace the steps of Terry Fox (at the same rate as Terry) in the summer of 2009. It’s a 4 month commitment and you have to submit a video to apply for a spot. A while back I began to compose a list of people who have run across Canada, here’s what I have so far:

There was Kevin in 2000 who crossed Canada in 222 days covering 8078km
http://www.runninginto2000.com
There was Anne Keane who currently has the Guiness Record for crossing Canada in 143 days over 7831km
http://www.powerofpeoplerun.com/

Google Maps recent ‘walking speed’ addition seems to think that it would take only 55 days walking to get from Vancouver to Halifax – that’s fast – guess it doesn’t count on you sleeping

Parkour..you say what?

jschmidty — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 21:26:20 +0000

So apparently I’ve missed an entire underground running movement, perhaps that’s because I do all of my running ‘aboveground’. But I was interested in an article that came across my email about ‘parkour’ a new running ‘style’ where people basically navigate around our urban jungles jumping off of buildings, concrete walls and whatever else gets in their way. While I’ve seen some youtube videos about what I would call ‘urban gymnastics’ and I was very impressed – I don’t really understand parkour. The online news article describes parkour as a unique running style, but I think it’s still more like gymnastics or skateboarding without a skateboard. There are a few very huge issues here raised in the article – this ‘sport’ may make sense as a small underground movement, but can we really have hundreds of people running around the city jumping off of buildings and concrete walls? I think some people need to know their limits and keep unique underground movements for the exclusive few who truly exhibit the character of the activity. If average folks want to do something like this then follow Toronto and build a facility for it or better yet – try trail running – a sport that I love and that allows people to run, jump over logs and brush, climb trees (if you’re bored with running), fall down hills, cross creeks and all sorts of other diversions if you choose, such as doing chin-ups on low-hanging branches. Do you really want to spend more time in the concrete jungle?