So, the main point of me being here (i.e. back in school) is to learn more about working with GIS - that's geographical information systems, for the uninitiated. I feel like this example of nerding out instead of working on any homework or my actual project (much of which is in GIS) is justified by that... Anyway, I got off my ass and biked to school yesterday, and it was more work than I expected. I live in Los Osos, which is pretty near sea level. The Los Osos valley is pretty level and leads into the outskirts of San Luis Obispo, where you turn and ride through a low pass, then down a bit, and then up to Cal Poly which is at the base of some low hills. Google maps says it's 13 miles.
I decided that since I have the technology and the data (we have anything that the city has), and because I'm a huge nerd, I would find out what my ride looks like. It took some googling to figure out how to make ArcMap my bitch but I was able to extract heights from a DEM (digital elevation model) of the county every 20' (seemed reasonable) along my route, and export that data into excel:
Looks more impressive than it actually is - the max elevation difference is about 250' (ok, 264.3 but who's counting).
Oh, and google's got the distance pretty wrong - it's just short of 12 miles.
You are SUCH a dork.
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