We left Aix-les-Bains early, trying to avoid getting caught in the imminent thunderstorm that was lurking above the mountains to the west of our hotel. Breakfast was at least a thousand calories chocolate muesli croustillant (basically granola) eaten out of a plastic plate. As you can imagine, it took several helpings to get a satisfactory amount of cereal in my stomach. I actually preferred this to the usual French patisserie for breakfast, it kept me fuller for longer and was a far denser form of energy. While I'm still unable to eat porridge (after daily over consumption of it during the TDA), I will definitely note that cereal is the ideal touring breakfast.
We head off in the direction of the storm, i.e. Chambery. The road wasn't overtly uphill but, like the general trend of the day, was a gruelling slog along moderately busy D roads. Our optimistic routing again tried to take us off into several footpaths but we elected not to cut the corner and actually made it through the centre of Chambery very quickly with a slight tailwind and a short descent.
This tailwind helped us for the rest of the day but, as we're passing through the Alps, it was generally uphill all the way, despite the D1009 which we took essentially following a river all the way. It is a surreal road too, running alongside a major motorway (the A14) and never really looking like an uphill road. Phil and I speculate that this is because of how wide and relatively straight it is (compared to normal windy mountain roads) and the fact that it is bordered by tall mountains, both of which mask its true incline.
We reached our original destination of St. Etienne de Cuines pretty quickly, at just after 11am over approximately 46 miles. As we were getting close to the village, we saw a large convoy of yellow vehicles blaring Daft Punk come past on an adjacent road. When we got to the village, the road was shut - for the Tour de France nonetheless! We saw the commercial convoy go past (they threw free samples of some, 'sirop' concentrated drink at us and sprayed us with Vittel water) and struck a conversation with a well informed tour follower from the Netherlands who had been trying to catch the riders at certain points on his motorcycle this week. After an hour of the occasional motorbike and team car coming through, the helicopters flew closer and eventually the riders came past at incredible pace. Besides the obvious physical challenge of the Tour, I can imagine it must be extremely tedious cycling amongst so many vehicles, especially if you become separated from the main peloton. Still, it was enjoyable to see.
After they'd all come through, it was only 1pm, so we went to our hotel to see if we could possible cancel our reservation and head on to the next hotel a say early. A couple of ladies smoking outside of the closed reception said it was possible if we cancelled before 2pm. Unfortunately reception was shut until 2pm. We called the booking office where I spent far too much of my phone credit speaking to a nice Indian call centre worker who eventually redirected me to the hotel (whose phone I could hear ringing). A lady eventually picked up and, having passed the phone to Phil since she didn't speak English, told us abruptly that reception was shut until 2pm and that she would not help. We went to pick up some food from the nearby Intermarche supermarket to fill the remaining time.
Inside the market, I ran into a rather sour looking cyclist who, Phil later informed me, was British. He seemed extremely pissed off at something. I can only imagine he must have had severe saddle sores. Either that or he was a Tour competitor on a budget who was having to buy his own water refills from the supermarket.
Today's lunch followed the usual pattern but I went a little more budget than usual. The baguette and brie were absolutely fine but buying cheap American style chocolate chip cookies in France was an error I will never forget.
At 2:05pm we began to panic because there was no one at reception and our boundary condition had obviously been breached since it was well after 2pm now. Phil had already secured an extra night's stay at our hotel in Modane and all we needed now was to cancel our stay at this hotel and get going.
A couple eventually turned up at 2:15pm and spent sometime trying to unlock the front door to the hotel. We thought they were just guests who were locked out but eventually the man with a moustache set himself up behind the reception desk. After double checking that we were absolutely sure that the reservation would be cancelled, he made it so. It remains unclear whether this cancellation incurred a cost to us in the end. I hope not.
The 24 miles to Modane we had eventually planned a separate day for because of the 6,000 feet of climbing. However, our actual hotel is located in the lower part of Modane, which saves us about 2,000 feet. With at least 5 hours of sunlight left, we were confident we could handle the 24 miles.
This turned out to be true but it was as misleadingly difficult as the first half of the day. Despite the road seeming flat, we were actually climbing throughout. We also passed an abnormal number of cyclists, many of whom had beautiful kit and bikes but were surprisingly slow! We were also overtaken by many cars and caravans with bike racks, most likely following the tour.
When we reached Modane after 72.79 miles on the road over 4.53.05 hours (an average of 14.8mph), we were pretty tired. Luckily we've bought ourselves an additional rest day tomorrow - which should help get us ready ahead of the planned 8,000 feet of climbing on Sunday. Additionally, my parents are coming to spend the weekend here with us to celebrate my mother's birthday - so there will be lots of cake!
Dinner this evening was a duet of crepes (technically one was a galette) accompanied by a glass of kir. It's hard to describe these well so I suggest you check out the photos that may eventually upload.
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We're coming to the end of our rest day in Aix-les-Bains. It's been a very laidback day, filled with copious amounts of sleep, not one but TWO hot chocolates (the first was awful, the second was much better), some great pastries and a waffle with a caramel butter and salt sauce. Generally gastronomically great.
For the last two dinners we've been patronising the local 'Geant Casino', a hypermarket which is rather like the Asda to Carrrefour, France's version of Tesco. Each time as we've walked back from the store along the 'hippodrome' (a local athletics / recreational area) to our hotel, we've experienced the opening salvos of a series of impressive thunderstorms. Carrying a bag full of bread, cheese and miscellaneous salads and desserts, we were unlucky to get a good soaking yesterday - Phil was quite depressed by the soggy bread. Today's baguette (a campagne - i.e.brown bread from the countryside, a novelty) survived much better and Phil was much happier.
Yesterday's ride was deliberately short - being the last of our first section - intended as a warm down. What was meant to be just 34 miles ended up being over 40 as we decided to follow our planned route accurately instead of sticking to the direct road into Aix-les-Bains. This proved to be our folly though when all the planned elevation gain that had yet to appear that day suddenly appears in a steep ascent up a mountain to the left of Aix-les-Bains. It's a little tricky to make out the exact nature of the road on our Garmin units and we didn't notice until we arrived there that half of the section of the route which lies parallel to the road going into Aix was actually a footpath. Unwilling to attempt a steep off-road descent with 23c tyres and a touring load, we elected to go around the hill, a nice fast descent and then quick bash down another D road.
Hotel Campanile, where we are staying, is a motel without any pretenses of being anything greater. It borders a golf course, which gives a pleasant backdrop and the rooms are comfortable. Our room is one of the few ground floor rooms that has a table with two chairs outside the front entrance. We made extensive use of these - for making various adjustments our breaks ahead of our section across the Alps, to sit somewhere within wi-fi range and for eating our huge Casino dinners
Aix-les-Bains itself is a quiet town that appears to be a gateway down to the Alps. It is also on the shores of the stunningly blue Lac du Bour and is a popular summer holiday destination for French tourists.
While yesterday was consumed with the chores of laundry, we walked down to the shore of the lake today and down to the main port. At this point an incoming thunderstorm made itself known and we fast walked up to town where numerous restaurants rejected our custom for lunch because it was past 2pm. I also visited a pharmacy and, in a groundbreaking acceptance of the fact that I probably do actually suffer from hayfever, purchased some antihistamines. I later connected to the matronly head waitress at a waffle restaurant when she admitted to using the same medicine (which I had left out on our table)
We're hoping to head off early tomorrow morning. The rain and thunder is forecast at 2pm and we calculate that we should be able to escape that. However, given the geography of this area, I suspect we might find the next microclimate doesn't respect the forecast we are relying on. Oh well, all part of the adventure
In other news, my 'technology stack' here is starting to annoy me intensely. Perhaps it will teach me for buying a cheap keyboard but it is struggling with my rapid typing speed. I have to type at a maximum speed of 2 characters per second or it will skip characters or insert duplicates. Highly frustrating. Additionally, turning Bluetooth on seems to interfere with my phone's ability to hold a connection to a weak wireless network. The lack of a reliable wi-fi connection is also limiting the speed at which things can be done on this smartphone and I have yet to find good way of managing photos locally and being able to upload them to both Facebook and Google+ in a way that can handle dropped connections. I may just wait until I get back home.
I've been trying to debug my knee pain. The main culprits look like either my saddle height or my cleat positioning, both of which I've tweaked. Let's see how it does going into some tough climbing.
Onwards over the mountains to Italy!
For the last two dinners we've been patronising the local 'Geant Casino', a hypermarket which is rather like the Asda to Carrrefour, France's version of Tesco. Each time as we've walked back from the store along the 'hippodrome' (a local athletics / recreational area) to our hotel, we've experienced the opening salvos of a series of impressive thunderstorms. Carrying a bag full of bread, cheese and miscellaneous salads and desserts, we were unlucky to get a good soaking yesterday - Phil was quite depressed by the soggy bread. Today's baguette (a campagne - i.e.brown bread from the countryside, a novelty) survived much better and Phil was much happier.
Yesterday's ride was deliberately short - being the last of our first section - intended as a warm down. What was meant to be just 34 miles ended up being over 40 as we decided to follow our planned route accurately instead of sticking to the direct road into Aix-les-Bains. This proved to be our folly though when all the planned elevation gain that had yet to appear that day suddenly appears in a steep ascent up a mountain to the left of Aix-les-Bains. It's a little tricky to make out the exact nature of the road on our Garmin units and we didn't notice until we arrived there that half of the section of the route which lies parallel to the road going into Aix was actually a footpath. Unwilling to attempt a steep off-road descent with 23c tyres and a touring load, we elected to go around the hill, a nice fast descent and then quick bash down another D road.
Hotel Campanile, where we are staying, is a motel without any pretenses of being anything greater. It borders a golf course, which gives a pleasant backdrop and the rooms are comfortable. Our room is one of the few ground floor rooms that has a table with two chairs outside the front entrance. We made extensive use of these - for making various adjustments our breaks ahead of our section across the Alps, to sit somewhere within wi-fi range and for eating our huge Casino dinners
Aix-les-Bains itself is a quiet town that appears to be a gateway down to the Alps. It is also on the shores of the stunningly blue Lac du Bour and is a popular summer holiday destination for French tourists.
While yesterday was consumed with the chores of laundry, we walked down to the shore of the lake today and down to the main port. At this point an incoming thunderstorm made itself known and we fast walked up to town where numerous restaurants rejected our custom for lunch because it was past 2pm. I also visited a pharmacy and, in a groundbreaking acceptance of the fact that I probably do actually suffer from hayfever, purchased some antihistamines. I later connected to the matronly head waitress at a waffle restaurant when she admitted to using the same medicine (which I had left out on our table)
We're hoping to head off early tomorrow morning. The rain and thunder is forecast at 2pm and we calculate that we should be able to escape that. However, given the geography of this area, I suspect we might find the next microclimate doesn't respect the forecast we are relying on. Oh well, all part of the adventure
In other news, my 'technology stack' here is starting to annoy me intensely. Perhaps it will teach me for buying a cheap keyboard but it is struggling with my rapid typing speed. I have to type at a maximum speed of 2 characters per second or it will skip characters or insert duplicates. Highly frustrating. Additionally, turning Bluetooth on seems to interfere with my phone's ability to hold a connection to a weak wireless network. The lack of a reliable wi-fi connection is also limiting the speed at which things can be done on this smartphone and I have yet to find good way of managing photos locally and being able to upload them to both Facebook and Google+ in a way that can handle dropped connections. I may just wait until I get back home.
I've been trying to debug my knee pain. The main culprits look like either my saddle height or my cleat positioning, both of which I've tweaked. Let's see how it does going into some tough climbing.
Onwards over the mountains to Italy!
Anish wrote at 1:23 am on Fri 19th Jul -
Nice work - these blog posts are surprisingly entertaining! Was the bad hot chocolate just powder in hot water? Shambles.
The last couple of days have been pretty tough going, partially due to the lack of promised internet access (both hotels have had 'technical issues'). Phil managed to track down the wireless router at the first and reboot it but it didn't seem to help. I suspect that sheer overloading was responsible for it being so unresponsive. (It used WEP encryption which suggests that the router was outdated at best and delinquent at worst.) Luckily today we managed to get online at lunchtime at an awesome sandwicherie in Bourg en Bresse. Besides the proprietor being (readily) willing to speak to us in English, she also had a vegetarian option and super fast wi-fi. Sadly I'm writing this post retrospectively so unless the Wi-Fi at this hotel fixes itself, it might be a while before you see it!
We intended to wake up at 6:30 and leave Nitry at 7 to make the most of the cooler morning but a combination of latent fatigue and a late previous night meant that we didn't get on the road until just after 8. Our first priority was to find breakfast (Nitry was small enough to not have a boulangerie but surprisingly sported a rather nice restaurant). The first one we found about 5 miles down the road was shut. Supposedly being open on Sunday means they are shut on Monday. France being France though, we soon found another after 3 miles and I bought two pain-au-chocolat.
Riding on further, around 20 miles in, we came across a bike shop - which, despite every sign suggesting it should be open, was shut. By this point my knee was consistently giving me issue and, convinced that there were no other variables that could be a problem, I decided to look at my cleats. It turns out that the cleat on my right shoe was pointing inwards slightly which would have caused my cycling position to be slightly 'off'.   My bike gave me almost no ergonomic problems since Africa (aside from considerable saddle issues) and I had since only changed the saddle and my shoes. I fixed the cleat and we were off again but the knee pain was still there - a twinge just above my right knee which made it extremely painful to put any weight on it.
Phil had another couple of punctures in the next 10 miles which slowed us down and by the time we hit the road again, it was 11:40 and we had only managed 30 miles of the intended 85 miles. The rest of the day was tough going, lots of 'rolling hills' down long, straight 'D' roads. These are the French analogues of Britain's A roads. Most of the time these are single carriageways, but occasionally the road would widen to accommodate three lanes and the middle lane would alternate as an overtaking lane for each direction of traffic. This was both a blessing and curse for us - it gave vehicles more space to overtake but near the point of alternation, they would overtake at much greater speed, no doubt feeling rushed by the lane suddenly coming to a close.
The D road we were on appeared to be a major freight road for France and there were a substantial number of lorries overtaking us. Luckily French lorry drivers are very courteous to cyclists and often pulled well out so as to minimise the impact of their draft on us. This must have been nervewracking for drivers coming the other way - especially on the single carriageways!
Additionally, there was a fair amount of resurfacing work going on where the holes had been 'repaired' by filling them with loose gravel. This led to quite a few small stones getting flicked in our direction by passing vehicles - painfully bouncing off our torsos and heads.
Our optimistic routing took us off-road yet again and feeling adventurous, I suggested to Phil that we take it. He grudgingly went along with it for a few hundred metres after which it became apparent that we would have absolutely no traction going uphill on the loose rocky surface. One of his reasons against taking it was that we would probably get a puncture and sure enough on our way back to the road I picked up a pinch puncture in my rear wheel, much to Phil's chagrin. On the plus side, both of my tyres are fully inflated now!
Lunch was a soporific many many calorie combination of bread, cheese, salad and these desserts called 'Paris Brest's which are named after the PBP ride Phil completed. They were seriously sticky but so awesome. I also picked up these chocolate butter biscuits and have slowly been working my way through them...I intend to try as many types of biscuit as possible before we leave France.
Not long after lunch, Phil suffered another puncture. Luckily we had picked up new inner tubes at the Atac supermarket we bought lunch at and it was an easy fix by the entrance to the quarry. I took the opportunity to catch some sleep perched upon two rocks and using my helmet as a pillow.
We hit the road again and after a few stops to fiddle with my saddle position, reached Chalone-sur-Saone (there's a little hat accent missing somewhere there - sorry) at about 6:45 after 6:39:27 hours of riding. We decided to visit the local Decathlon and Phil finally managed to pick up some genuine 'good' inner tubes and patches. I bought myself a bottle cage.
All in all it was a long day - 96.31 miles with an average of 14.4 mph. Chalon is a lovely town and we ended up eating at a pizzeria just behind the 'Cafe Piccadilly Pub'. The (South Indian?) owner spoke good English and made me a calzone with the ham swapped out for mushrooms. It was good and was followed by a creme brulee - my favourite dessert. A good day.
This morning we actually managed to wake up at 6:30 (as painful as it was). Chalon being a bigger town than the last two, we were able to pick up breakfast before leaving and I had a lovely almond pastry called a 'Jesuit' with a hot chocolate. Phil finally managed to get his morning coffee - something which he hadn't imagined would be so difficult to find in France!
We left Chalon at about 7am with a tough day ahead of us. Luckily there were no punctures today! (Ironic too, given that we are currently better prepared for punctures than we ever have been.) Most of the day was the same sort of straight D roads over rolling hills and sadly many lorries. These were relatively quick though and took us through some lovely farmland and the occasional section lined with evenly planted trees. At about 55 miles we entered a forest and then it became clear the terrain was changing as we turned into a road that switchbacked straight up hill. We had just entered the 'Rhone-Alpes', the French county that, I believe, includes the Alps themselves.
Climbing was hard work and I was worried how my knee would hold up, given its aversion to putting the hammer down. My Ti bike was overgeared for the hills in Ethiopia but I hadn't learnt my lesson and it is still running the same gearing - albeit with 10 kilos of additional load. Basically - tough going.
My knee survived though - there was no significant pain as long as I stayed seated. Soon enough my other knee started aching from the strain and it was much easier to ignore the original painful knee! This flattened off slightly but soon became steeper as we climbed up onto the plateau where Hauteville-Lompnes was. We pushed on though at a steady speed (usually between 5 and 7 mph) and soon reached 'Corlier', a hamlet at the beginning of the flat-ish plateau. Feeling pretty thirsty, we looked for water at a campsite there but no operator was in sight. Eventually we snuck into a kitchen block and filled our bottles, hoping that no one would mind.
The last 10 miles were reasonably flat, having climbed 1500 feet to get up to the plateau in just over 15 miles. We reached Hauteville-Lompnes after 80.69 miles at 4:30pm, ridden over 6:04:37 hours - with a respectable average of 13.2 mph. Amusingly, the hotel was shut when we arrived with a note saying that reception will be open at 6pm. Phil acquiesced and cleaned himself up with some wet wipes and changed into his non cycling gear. After my Tour D'Afrique adventures, I was more content staying in my (sweaty) cycling gear until a proper shower could be had.
While waiting for the hotel to open, we raided the local Carrefour and picked up some fruit (surprisingly lacking from our diet here). I took my biscuit experimentation further with some chocolate florentines and a litre of 'demi-creme' milk. We gorged on these on the tables outside our hotel and I managed to polish off all of the biscuits and a fair chunk of the milk -- almost a thousand calories worth! (It probably doesn't need saying but I am a big fan of these biscuits, light, crispy and with the perfect amount of chocolate - they were sublime.)
For dinner we wandered around looking for the restaurant most able to serve a vegetarian meal, settling on a brasserie near the middle of the town. Amusingly, for me at least, there was some confusion when Phil ordered a meal for me and we both received vegetarian salads! Poor Phil.
Tonight will be an early night ahead of another early start tomorrow as we descend into Aix-les-Bains where we will spend a rest day.
We intended to wake up at 6:30 and leave Nitry at 7 to make the most of the cooler morning but a combination of latent fatigue and a late previous night meant that we didn't get on the road until just after 8. Our first priority was to find breakfast (Nitry was small enough to not have a boulangerie but surprisingly sported a rather nice restaurant). The first one we found about 5 miles down the road was shut. Supposedly being open on Sunday means they are shut on Monday. France being France though, we soon found another after 3 miles and I bought two pain-au-chocolat.
Riding on further, around 20 miles in, we came across a bike shop - which, despite every sign suggesting it should be open, was shut. By this point my knee was consistently giving me issue and, convinced that there were no other variables that could be a problem, I decided to look at my cleats. It turns out that the cleat on my right shoe was pointing inwards slightly which would have caused my cycling position to be slightly 'off'.   My bike gave me almost no ergonomic problems since Africa (aside from considerable saddle issues) and I had since only changed the saddle and my shoes. I fixed the cleat and we were off again but the knee pain was still there - a twinge just above my right knee which made it extremely painful to put any weight on it.
Phil had another couple of punctures in the next 10 miles which slowed us down and by the time we hit the road again, it was 11:40 and we had only managed 30 miles of the intended 85 miles. The rest of the day was tough going, lots of 'rolling hills' down long, straight 'D' roads. These are the French analogues of Britain's A roads. Most of the time these are single carriageways, but occasionally the road would widen to accommodate three lanes and the middle lane would alternate as an overtaking lane for each direction of traffic. This was both a blessing and curse for us - it gave vehicles more space to overtake but near the point of alternation, they would overtake at much greater speed, no doubt feeling rushed by the lane suddenly coming to a close.
The D road we were on appeared to be a major freight road for France and there were a substantial number of lorries overtaking us. Luckily French lorry drivers are very courteous to cyclists and often pulled well out so as to minimise the impact of their draft on us. This must have been nervewracking for drivers coming the other way - especially on the single carriageways!
Additionally, there was a fair amount of resurfacing work going on where the holes had been 'repaired' by filling them with loose gravel. This led to quite a few small stones getting flicked in our direction by passing vehicles - painfully bouncing off our torsos and heads.
Our optimistic routing took us off-road yet again and feeling adventurous, I suggested to Phil that we take it. He grudgingly went along with it for a few hundred metres after which it became apparent that we would have absolutely no traction going uphill on the loose rocky surface. One of his reasons against taking it was that we would probably get a puncture and sure enough on our way back to the road I picked up a pinch puncture in my rear wheel, much to Phil's chagrin. On the plus side, both of my tyres are fully inflated now!
Lunch was a soporific many many calorie combination of bread, cheese, salad and these desserts called 'Paris Brest's which are named after the PBP ride Phil completed. They were seriously sticky but so awesome. I also picked up these chocolate butter biscuits and have slowly been working my way through them...I intend to try as many types of biscuit as possible before we leave France.
Not long after lunch, Phil suffered another puncture. Luckily we had picked up new inner tubes at the Atac supermarket we bought lunch at and it was an easy fix by the entrance to the quarry. I took the opportunity to catch some sleep perched upon two rocks and using my helmet as a pillow.
We hit the road again and after a few stops to fiddle with my saddle position, reached Chalone-sur-Saone (there's a little hat accent missing somewhere there - sorry) at about 6:45 after 6:39:27 hours of riding. We decided to visit the local Decathlon and Phil finally managed to pick up some genuine 'good' inner tubes and patches. I bought myself a bottle cage.
All in all it was a long day - 96.31 miles with an average of 14.4 mph. Chalon is a lovely town and we ended up eating at a pizzeria just behind the 'Cafe Piccadilly Pub'. The (South Indian?) owner spoke good English and made me a calzone with the ham swapped out for mushrooms. It was good and was followed by a creme brulee - my favourite dessert. A good day.
This morning we actually managed to wake up at 6:30 (as painful as it was). Chalon being a bigger town than the last two, we were able to pick up breakfast before leaving and I had a lovely almond pastry called a 'Jesuit' with a hot chocolate. Phil finally managed to get his morning coffee - something which he hadn't imagined would be so difficult to find in France!
We left Chalon at about 7am with a tough day ahead of us. Luckily there were no punctures today! (Ironic too, given that we are currently better prepared for punctures than we ever have been.) Most of the day was the same sort of straight D roads over rolling hills and sadly many lorries. These were relatively quick though and took us through some lovely farmland and the occasional section lined with evenly planted trees. At about 55 miles we entered a forest and then it became clear the terrain was changing as we turned into a road that switchbacked straight up hill. We had just entered the 'Rhone-Alpes', the French county that, I believe, includes the Alps themselves.
Climbing was hard work and I was worried how my knee would hold up, given its aversion to putting the hammer down. My Ti bike was overgeared for the hills in Ethiopia but I hadn't learnt my lesson and it is still running the same gearing - albeit with 10 kilos of additional load. Basically - tough going.
My knee survived though - there was no significant pain as long as I stayed seated. Soon enough my other knee started aching from the strain and it was much easier to ignore the original painful knee! This flattened off slightly but soon became steeper as we climbed up onto the plateau where Hauteville-Lompnes was. We pushed on though at a steady speed (usually between 5 and 7 mph) and soon reached 'Corlier', a hamlet at the beginning of the flat-ish plateau. Feeling pretty thirsty, we looked for water at a campsite there but no operator was in sight. Eventually we snuck into a kitchen block and filled our bottles, hoping that no one would mind.
The last 10 miles were reasonably flat, having climbed 1500 feet to get up to the plateau in just over 15 miles. We reached Hauteville-Lompnes after 80.69 miles at 4:30pm, ridden over 6:04:37 hours - with a respectable average of 13.2 mph. Amusingly, the hotel was shut when we arrived with a note saying that reception will be open at 6pm. Phil acquiesced and cleaned himself up with some wet wipes and changed into his non cycling gear. After my Tour D'Afrique adventures, I was more content staying in my (sweaty) cycling gear until a proper shower could be had.
While waiting for the hotel to open, we raided the local Carrefour and picked up some fruit (surprisingly lacking from our diet here). I took my biscuit experimentation further with some chocolate florentines and a litre of 'demi-creme' milk. We gorged on these on the tables outside our hotel and I managed to polish off all of the biscuits and a fair chunk of the milk -- almost a thousand calories worth! (It probably doesn't need saying but I am a big fan of these biscuits, light, crispy and with the perfect amount of chocolate - they were sublime.)
For dinner we wandered around looking for the restaurant most able to serve a vegetarian meal, settling on a brasserie near the middle of the town. Amusingly, for me at least, there was some confusion when Phil ordered a meal for me and we both received vegetarian salads! Poor Phil.
Tonight will be an early night ahead of another early start tomorrow as we descend into Aix-les-Bains where we will spend a rest day.
Anish wrote at 10:08 pm on Wed 17th Jul -
Don't worry, soon you will be in Italy and the vegetarian food will be EPIC! Enjoy! :-)
John & Jean wrote at 11:10 pm on Wed 17th Jul -
Best of riding to you both. Enjoy your rest day!
Up early on Saturday, I was worried we would miss the train out of Kings Cross. It didn't turn out to be a legitimate concern. We got through the Eurostar security check and the French immigration without much delay and found ourselves waiting in the departure lounge at about 06:55 with at least 3 other tourist groups (one American, one Asian and one French). Boarding was initially delayed as they were cleaning the train and when it was delayed further at 07:30 (the departure time was 07:31) they announced that it was broken and they were replacing it with another train.
We eventually rolled out of London at 08:30 and arrived in Paris after an uneventful journey at 11:30am local time. I managed to get a couple of brief naps on the train - Phil and I had both barely slept that night as we made last minute preparations and tried to load routes onto our GPS devices. Phil's device hadn't quite liked the map though and so I surrendered my SD card to him - his Garmin is considerably more modern than mine and hence we would use it as our primary navigational aid. I also managed to lose my Fitbit on the train, most likely when changing from mufti into cycling lycra. Argh.
After arriving at Gare du Nord, we proceeded to the Geoparts office to pick up our bikes. There was no one in the office outside and an outwardly calm tall English chap with a bike back. When we spoke to him though, it was clear he was panicking somewhat. He had a train in 10 minutes and they refused to let him on with his bike. When the Geoparts employee actually arrived, he was so unwilling to actually perform his job that our poor fellow cyclist was forced to try again. I hope he didn't miss his train!
Luckily our bikes had arrived undamaged and we got moving pretty quickly. It was a beautiful day in Paris and (possibly due to today's Bastille day) there was not much traffic. On the whole I've found French drivers to be surprisingly tolerant of cyclists. Moreso than British drivers - perhaps due to a considerably more prominent and established cycling heritage. Equally the roads are better planned for cyclists and are generally wider and with lower traffic. All this leads to calmer drivers and safer cyclists.
We left Paris pretty quickly and after about 18 miles from the train station, Phil had his first of many punctures in a slightly suspicious looking banlieue. He fixed it without incident and we were off again.
At about 25 miles, we stopped at a boulangerie. It had just gone 1pm and we were a little hungry. Outside the store was a table with a variety of sweets including baklava, and, would you believe it - jalebis! After deciding what we wanted, I committed a faux-pas and severely annoyed the proprietor of the shop by serving myself. (To be fair, she had left everything - paper bags and tongs - out!) I picked some extremely sticky desert that was basically an elongated and less dense baklava that was absolutely dripping in syrup. Phil picked a jalebi and we proceeded down the road to find a place some way away from the angry baker to sit.
As we rolled on, Phil suffered another puncture where the tube split in his front wheel. I took this opportunity to gorge on my lunch-dessert. He repaired this and we left, only to have to stop about 20 metres later when it went flat again! After he had fixed this, he noticed his rear wheel was flat...and was not happy at all. Around about the same time, my body's insulin response had kicked in and I was feeling extremely sleepy. Lying down on the long, unkempt grass in the mid-day heat, I shut my eyes.
I woke a short while later, extremely sweat and feeling a little faint. Phil had fixed both of his tyres and was eager to get going again. It took me a couple of kilometres to wake up but then all was good! We stopped for an actual lunch in a small village at about 40 miles in where Phil had a nice quiche and I bought some cheese and a demi-baguette.
With about 10 miles left to go Phil suffered another couple of punctures. We had hoped to visit the Decathlon in Montereau where we were staying. Phil wanted to pick up some tubes that had slightly better production quality and I wanted to pick up a bottle cage (my last one being a casualty of the Tour D'Afrique). Sadly, the punctures meant we reached Montereau at about 8pm - and Decathlon shut at 7:30pm :-(. Total moving time was 4:25:56 and we cycled 65.82 miles in total, giving us an average of 14.9 mph.
The hotel itself was fairly budget but clean and with the exact 'pod' bathrooms Fitz provided for its undergraduate accommodation - where the shower curtain smothers you while you shower. Hungry and tired, we showered and then went searching for food, initially coming up empty handed. We eventually tracked down a cluster of restaurants actually just behind Decathlon and ended up at a restaurant called 'La Patatarie', an astonishingly popular French chain restaurant that just serves baked potatoes. After some initial confusion ordering a vegetarian meal, I was served an extremely large potato topped with three cheeses. Meanwhile, Phil had a plate which had three types of tartiflette - a gratin dish. Dessert for me was two (not one) delicious profiteroles.
I managed to get into bed by 11pm and we woke at 8am, giving us a reasonable amount of sleep - well received after the exhausting previous night.
Today we cycled considerably further - 80.97 miles over 5:23:39 hours (an average of 15mph). Having left early-ish we arrived in a small village called Nitry at 5:30pm.
The initial plan was to leave at 9am but as we went to leave, Phil noticed his rear wheel was flat. We decided to go to Decathlon (it opened at 9:30am) but upon reaching it, noticed it wasn't open on Sundays! Phil used my spare inner tube and we hit the road shortly later. We stopped 10 miles down the road at a roadside bakery, filled up on brioche and motored down the long, flat and straight roads east and then south.
The weather has been absolutely baking here, approaching 30 degrees at the hottest parts of the day. Lacking a Camelbak (a casualty of the unfortunate struggle against carrying too much weight with me), I found it hard to stay rehydrated and found a headache creeping in pretty early. Despite having water in my bottles, it was much more of an effort to reach down and drink from them - made harder still when riding in a (mini) peloton. Lacking a second bottle cage makes access to all of my water tricky too.
At 30 miles we passed through a 'centre de commerce' called 'Sens'. Our hopes raised by seeing a Decathlon sign, we eventually stumbled across the Carrefour that was, sadly, showing absolutely no life. In our attempt to get back on track, we took a footpath, rode over a grassy bank and thought we were lost. Eventually we took a road that we thought would intersect with our route - and luckily turned out to lead us straight past a Netto supermarket. This is a super budget food and grocery store where we (quite literally) filled our panniers with tasty food and water to get us through the rest of the day. Being a public holiday and a Sunday in France, it was almost guaranteed that nothing would be open in the afternoon. I bought yet more bread and cheese (folding a baguette in half to get it to fit in my pannier), an 850g knock-off Yop yoghurt drink (which I drank all at once) and 12 own brand cereal bars.
We moved on but drinking such a large quantity of yoghurt had put undue pressure on my bowels and I told Phil to keep watch for any toilet facilities en route since Netto didn't provide any. We eventually passed through a small town where there was a public WC - and without going into too much detail, I can say that (as is apparently common for French public toilets) - it shared a LOT in common with the toilets we came across in Africa.
The rest of the day was uneventful. I took my first (pinch) puncture of the trip when our slightly optimistic routing took us over a gravel road and my underinflated tyres rolled over one rock too many. I tried repairing the puncture but failed - most patches are far too large for 23c tubes.
I'm very proud of how fast my bike still is. It just rolls and rolls - which I suppose it has always down. Since bringing it back from Africa, I haven't ridden it an awful lot, being more afraid of theft in England than I was in the whole of Africa. When I brought it back, I refurbished most of it, replacing the wheel bearings and upgrading the bottom bracket to use ceramic bearings. I also replaced the venerable steel Surly Crosscheck fork with a Kinesis Carbon fork that performs absolutely beautifully. I'm running some Continental Ultragator Pros - these are 'reinforced' lightweight racing tyres. Perhaps a bit too fragile for this trip but I'm hoping that the road surfaces will remain good and that it won't be too wet. We'll see.
Phil also kindly rebuilt my front wheel since it was knocked out of true and the spoke nipples had corroded enough to make it impossible to true. Finally, I replaced the cassette with a wider 11-27 range cassette to support the (terrifying) section through the Alps.
My legs are tired today, as expected but on the whole this trip is proving to be quite manageable. The luxury of having hot showers and all the food I could possibly eat (albeit mainly cheese based) is making all these miles more palatable. My right knee worries me slightly - it's probably not used to pushing the load of panniers on top of just the bike and has been feeling ache-y. We'll see how it does in the mountains.
We eventually rolled out of London at 08:30 and arrived in Paris after an uneventful journey at 11:30am local time. I managed to get a couple of brief naps on the train - Phil and I had both barely slept that night as we made last minute preparations and tried to load routes onto our GPS devices. Phil's device hadn't quite liked the map though and so I surrendered my SD card to him - his Garmin is considerably more modern than mine and hence we would use it as our primary navigational aid. I also managed to lose my Fitbit on the train, most likely when changing from mufti into cycling lycra. Argh.
After arriving at Gare du Nord, we proceeded to the Geoparts office to pick up our bikes. There was no one in the office outside and an outwardly calm tall English chap with a bike back. When we spoke to him though, it was clear he was panicking somewhat. He had a train in 10 minutes and they refused to let him on with his bike. When the Geoparts employee actually arrived, he was so unwilling to actually perform his job that our poor fellow cyclist was forced to try again. I hope he didn't miss his train!
Luckily our bikes had arrived undamaged and we got moving pretty quickly. It was a beautiful day in Paris and (possibly due to today's Bastille day) there was not much traffic. On the whole I've found French drivers to be surprisingly tolerant of cyclists. Moreso than British drivers - perhaps due to a considerably more prominent and established cycling heritage. Equally the roads are better planned for cyclists and are generally wider and with lower traffic. All this leads to calmer drivers and safer cyclists.
We left Paris pretty quickly and after about 18 miles from the train station, Phil had his first of many punctures in a slightly suspicious looking banlieue. He fixed it without incident and we were off again.
At about 25 miles, we stopped at a boulangerie. It had just gone 1pm and we were a little hungry. Outside the store was a table with a variety of sweets including baklava, and, would you believe it - jalebis! After deciding what we wanted, I committed a faux-pas and severely annoyed the proprietor of the shop by serving myself. (To be fair, she had left everything - paper bags and tongs - out!) I picked some extremely sticky desert that was basically an elongated and less dense baklava that was absolutely dripping in syrup. Phil picked a jalebi and we proceeded down the road to find a place some way away from the angry baker to sit.
As we rolled on, Phil suffered another puncture where the tube split in his front wheel. I took this opportunity to gorge on my lunch-dessert. He repaired this and we left, only to have to stop about 20 metres later when it went flat again! After he had fixed this, he noticed his rear wheel was flat...and was not happy at all. Around about the same time, my body's insulin response had kicked in and I was feeling extremely sleepy. Lying down on the long, unkempt grass in the mid-day heat, I shut my eyes.
I woke a short while later, extremely sweat and feeling a little faint. Phil had fixed both of his tyres and was eager to get going again. It took me a couple of kilometres to wake up but then all was good! We stopped for an actual lunch in a small village at about 40 miles in where Phil had a nice quiche and I bought some cheese and a demi-baguette.
With about 10 miles left to go Phil suffered another couple of punctures. We had hoped to visit the Decathlon in Montereau where we were staying. Phil wanted to pick up some tubes that had slightly better production quality and I wanted to pick up a bottle cage (my last one being a casualty of the Tour D'Afrique). Sadly, the punctures meant we reached Montereau at about 8pm - and Decathlon shut at 7:30pm :-(. Total moving time was 4:25:56 and we cycled 65.82 miles in total, giving us an average of 14.9 mph.
The hotel itself was fairly budget but clean and with the exact 'pod' bathrooms Fitz provided for its undergraduate accommodation - where the shower curtain smothers you while you shower. Hungry and tired, we showered and then went searching for food, initially coming up empty handed. We eventually tracked down a cluster of restaurants actually just behind Decathlon and ended up at a restaurant called 'La Patatarie', an astonishingly popular French chain restaurant that just serves baked potatoes. After some initial confusion ordering a vegetarian meal, I was served an extremely large potato topped with three cheeses. Meanwhile, Phil had a plate which had three types of tartiflette - a gratin dish. Dessert for me was two (not one) delicious profiteroles.
I managed to get into bed by 11pm and we woke at 8am, giving us a reasonable amount of sleep - well received after the exhausting previous night.
Today we cycled considerably further - 80.97 miles over 5:23:39 hours (an average of 15mph). Having left early-ish we arrived in a small village called Nitry at 5:30pm.
The initial plan was to leave at 9am but as we went to leave, Phil noticed his rear wheel was flat. We decided to go to Decathlon (it opened at 9:30am) but upon reaching it, noticed it wasn't open on Sundays! Phil used my spare inner tube and we hit the road shortly later. We stopped 10 miles down the road at a roadside bakery, filled up on brioche and motored down the long, flat and straight roads east and then south.
The weather has been absolutely baking here, approaching 30 degrees at the hottest parts of the day. Lacking a Camelbak (a casualty of the unfortunate struggle against carrying too much weight with me), I found it hard to stay rehydrated and found a headache creeping in pretty early. Despite having water in my bottles, it was much more of an effort to reach down and drink from them - made harder still when riding in a (mini) peloton. Lacking a second bottle cage makes access to all of my water tricky too.
At 30 miles we passed through a 'centre de commerce' called 'Sens'. Our hopes raised by seeing a Decathlon sign, we eventually stumbled across the Carrefour that was, sadly, showing absolutely no life. In our attempt to get back on track, we took a footpath, rode over a grassy bank and thought we were lost. Eventually we took a road that we thought would intersect with our route - and luckily turned out to lead us straight past a Netto supermarket. This is a super budget food and grocery store where we (quite literally) filled our panniers with tasty food and water to get us through the rest of the day. Being a public holiday and a Sunday in France, it was almost guaranteed that nothing would be open in the afternoon. I bought yet more bread and cheese (folding a baguette in half to get it to fit in my pannier), an 850g knock-off Yop yoghurt drink (which I drank all at once) and 12 own brand cereal bars.
We moved on but drinking such a large quantity of yoghurt had put undue pressure on my bowels and I told Phil to keep watch for any toilet facilities en route since Netto didn't provide any. We eventually passed through a small town where there was a public WC - and without going into too much detail, I can say that (as is apparently common for French public toilets) - it shared a LOT in common with the toilets we came across in Africa.
The rest of the day was uneventful. I took my first (pinch) puncture of the trip when our slightly optimistic routing took us over a gravel road and my underinflated tyres rolled over one rock too many. I tried repairing the puncture but failed - most patches are far too large for 23c tubes.
I'm very proud of how fast my bike still is. It just rolls and rolls - which I suppose it has always down. Since bringing it back from Africa, I haven't ridden it an awful lot, being more afraid of theft in England than I was in the whole of Africa. When I brought it back, I refurbished most of it, replacing the wheel bearings and upgrading the bottom bracket to use ceramic bearings. I also replaced the venerable steel Surly Crosscheck fork with a Kinesis Carbon fork that performs absolutely beautifully. I'm running some Continental Ultragator Pros - these are 'reinforced' lightweight racing tyres. Perhaps a bit too fragile for this trip but I'm hoping that the road surfaces will remain good and that it won't be too wet. We'll see.
Phil also kindly rebuilt my front wheel since it was knocked out of true and the spoke nipples had corroded enough to make it impossible to true. Finally, I replaced the cassette with a wider 11-27 range cassette to support the (terrifying) section through the Alps.
My legs are tired today, as expected but on the whole this trip is proving to be quite manageable. The luxury of having hot showers and all the food I could possibly eat (albeit mainly cheese based) is making all these miles more palatable. My right knee worries me slightly - it's probably not used to pushing the load of panniers on top of just the bike and has been feeling ache-y. We'll see how it does in the mountains.
Nayan wrote at 11:37 pm on Sun 14th Jul -
You lost another Fitbit!?! Enjoy the cheese n bread, cu soon. Nayan
Aamod Mishra wrote at 12:05 am on Mon 15th Jul -
Nice work!
It's been a hectic last few weeks. Besides trying to sell all of my possessions that can't be taken with me to Berkeley (and hold insufficient sentimental value), I spent a considerable amount of time working on another social network analysis paper with my friends from Kings College London, a colleague from Last.fm and two professors from Iran and Korea. Once that was all done and dusted, Phil and I belatedly started planning in depth our proposed short (but actually not that short) cycle tour.
Phil is an accomplished audax rider. Friends of the Geek on a Bicycle will note that he was the person who first motivated me to get cycling and if not for him inspiring me to start cycling to my high school, I'd still be as obese as I was as a teenager. We first got to know each other at the back of the field during a mandatory school cross country run. As plump 11 year olds, we were terrified of the consequences of being lapped by a considerable number of ours peers. Phil's eldest sister was training to be a lawyer at the time and I have fond memories of him threatening to get her involved if we were punished for being too slow!
During sixth form we both commuted by bicycle each morning and evening. In our holidays we would cycle together around Hertfordshire, and into London occasionally. For one week in Easter 2005, we took our bikes to his parents' holiday home in France and spent our days reading books, trying to get a pirated copy of Motorcross Madness to work over between two laptops connected by a crossover cable and, of course, cycling. It was an immense achievement when, on the last day, we cycled a shade over 80 miles on our venerable mountain bikes - Phil riding a maroon red Grisley rigid mountain bike and myself on my (now stolen) Hardrock Pro with front suspension. At the beginning of the week I would struggle to make it up a hill near the cottage called 'Pain-de-Sucre'. This was a hill with a considerable gradient and I'd usually have to get off half way up and walk. By the end of the week I was able to make it all the way up.
As happens, we grew apart during university - him studying classics at Liverpool University, a considerable drive away from Cambridge. We met extremely infrequently since he visited home rather less than I did. During that time we both took our passion for cycling further. I joined the Cambridge University Cycling Club and started racing. Meanwhile, Phil signed up for a series of audaxes, completing the 1200 kilometre Paris-Brest-Paris ride in 2008. While I thought the Tour D'Afrique was hard, Paris-Brest-Paris was in a wholly different league. Phil cycled this distance over just five days, sleeping rough and carrying everything he needed with him. The weather that week was extraordinarily poor and he cycled through rain and wind, sleeping for a handful of hours every night.
After university we both found ourselves in London and working similar careers. While neither of us have done any epic rides since, we were both keen to do something similarly involved. I knew that before I started my Master's course, I wanted to experience as much of Europe as possible and to try and do something meaningful. Phil had similar holiday ambitions and proposed Calais to Brindisi - a historically significant audax route based on an old passenger train that used to take well off Britons out to their summer holidays in continental Europe.
Audax pace, is, I'm told 14 days to cover 2100 kilometres. (Bear in mind this route crosses the Alpes.) We're giving ourselves 20 days and have truncated the uninspiring first two days of the trip from Calais to Paris. Tomorrow morning we'll be on the second Eurostar train of the day to Paris (and at the time of writing, I'm rather hoping that our bikes have already made it there, courtesy of the EuroDespatch centre at St. Pancras).
With a rest day in Aix-les-Bains, again in San Marino and finally in Brindisi, I'm hoping that my body will be able to cope with what will be about 80 miles a day on a fully laden bike. I'm not a particularly strong cyclist in the physical sense of the word - one of the decisions that really helped me a lot in the Tour D'Afrique was taking an exceptionally light (but sturdy) bike. Loading this up with 8.5 kilos of touring load is going to test my limits but I'm hoping I'll emerge stronger at the end of the trip.
The other physical difference (aside from the transient limb injuries that I've undergone various surgeries for) is that since the Tour D'Afrique I've been diagnosed with Hashimoto's thyroiditis. This in itself didn't prove to be a problem during that trip (aside from many amusing photos of me napping on moderately expensive expeditions). Now, three years later, even with treatment, I do find myself unreasonably tired often. Perhaps not enough to negatively impact our progress on the trip but enough to perhaps temper my psyche.
So, perhaps more so than with the Tour D'Afrique, I am cautious of my ability to finish. Having read Eric's and Gerald's (excellent) books on the Tour D'Afrique, I am reminded of the exceptional challenges we faced and how the wrong encounter with a pedestrian or a tropical disease could lead to the tour ending prematurely.
Either way, I'll try my best to keep up with Phil whilst enjoying a large amount of bread and cheese, as vegetarians do in Europe :-).
Finally, this trip presents another challenge - we're carrying our own load. This means no laptop. I'm also forgoing a dedicated camera and MP3 player - with the intention of using my Nexus 4 (plus a Bluetooth keyboard which I am currently using) to replace all three of these gadgets. Let's see how that works out. (Who wants to bet that it will become unusably broken within the first week?)
Our route:
Phil is an accomplished audax rider. Friends of the Geek on a Bicycle will note that he was the person who first motivated me to get cycling and if not for him inspiring me to start cycling to my high school, I'd still be as obese as I was as a teenager. We first got to know each other at the back of the field during a mandatory school cross country run. As plump 11 year olds, we were terrified of the consequences of being lapped by a considerable number of ours peers. Phil's eldest sister was training to be a lawyer at the time and I have fond memories of him threatening to get her involved if we were punished for being too slow!
During sixth form we both commuted by bicycle each morning and evening. In our holidays we would cycle together around Hertfordshire, and into London occasionally. For one week in Easter 2005, we took our bikes to his parents' holiday home in France and spent our days reading books, trying to get a pirated copy of Motorcross Madness to work over between two laptops connected by a crossover cable and, of course, cycling. It was an immense achievement when, on the last day, we cycled a shade over 80 miles on our venerable mountain bikes - Phil riding a maroon red Grisley rigid mountain bike and myself on my (now stolen) Hardrock Pro with front suspension. At the beginning of the week I would struggle to make it up a hill near the cottage called 'Pain-de-Sucre'. This was a hill with a considerable gradient and I'd usually have to get off half way up and walk. By the end of the week I was able to make it all the way up.
As happens, we grew apart during university - him studying classics at Liverpool University, a considerable drive away from Cambridge. We met extremely infrequently since he visited home rather less than I did. During that time we both took our passion for cycling further. I joined the Cambridge University Cycling Club and started racing. Meanwhile, Phil signed up for a series of audaxes, completing the 1200 kilometre Paris-Brest-Paris ride in 2008. While I thought the Tour D'Afrique was hard, Paris-Brest-Paris was in a wholly different league. Phil cycled this distance over just five days, sleeping rough and carrying everything he needed with him. The weather that week was extraordinarily poor and he cycled through rain and wind, sleeping for a handful of hours every night.
After university we both found ourselves in London and working similar careers. While neither of us have done any epic rides since, we were both keen to do something similarly involved. I knew that before I started my Master's course, I wanted to experience as much of Europe as possible and to try and do something meaningful. Phil had similar holiday ambitions and proposed Calais to Brindisi - a historically significant audax route based on an old passenger train that used to take well off Britons out to their summer holidays in continental Europe.
Audax pace, is, I'm told 14 days to cover 2100 kilometres. (Bear in mind this route crosses the Alpes.) We're giving ourselves 20 days and have truncated the uninspiring first two days of the trip from Calais to Paris. Tomorrow morning we'll be on the second Eurostar train of the day to Paris (and at the time of writing, I'm rather hoping that our bikes have already made it there, courtesy of the EuroDespatch centre at St. Pancras).
With a rest day in Aix-les-Bains, again in San Marino and finally in Brindisi, I'm hoping that my body will be able to cope with what will be about 80 miles a day on a fully laden bike. I'm not a particularly strong cyclist in the physical sense of the word - one of the decisions that really helped me a lot in the Tour D'Afrique was taking an exceptionally light (but sturdy) bike. Loading this up with 8.5 kilos of touring load is going to test my limits but I'm hoping I'll emerge stronger at the end of the trip.
The other physical difference (aside from the transient limb injuries that I've undergone various surgeries for) is that since the Tour D'Afrique I've been diagnosed with Hashimoto's thyroiditis. This in itself didn't prove to be a problem during that trip (aside from many amusing photos of me napping on moderately expensive expeditions). Now, three years later, even with treatment, I do find myself unreasonably tired often. Perhaps not enough to negatively impact our progress on the trip but enough to perhaps temper my psyche.
So, perhaps more so than with the Tour D'Afrique, I am cautious of my ability to finish. Having read Eric's and Gerald's (excellent) books on the Tour D'Afrique, I am reminded of the exceptional challenges we faced and how the wrong encounter with a pedestrian or a tropical disease could lead to the tour ending prematurely.
Either way, I'll try my best to keep up with Phil whilst enjoying a large amount of bread and cheese, as vegetarians do in Europe :-).
Finally, this trip presents another challenge - we're carrying our own load. This means no laptop. I'm also forgoing a dedicated camera and MP3 player - with the intention of using my Nexus 4 (plus a Bluetooth keyboard which I am currently using) to replace all three of these gadgets. Let's see how that works out. (Who wants to bet that it will become unusably broken within the first week?)
Our route:
No comments yet!
In preparation for the big move to Berkeley in very slightly over two months time, I've been busy trying to minimise my 'working set' of possessions down to that which would fit in two bags. A lot of my possessions, particularly those bought recently, are quite easy to decide upon. If I don't use them regularly, or haven't used them frequently and don't hold any sentimental value - it either goes on eBay if it has value (yay for marginal supplementary income), or on Freecycle.
It becomes trickier when I start going back in time. I currently live at my parents' house and so am still surrounded by many of my childhood possessions. Several of these were hard-earned, through summer jobs and a lot of hustling on eBay. Others of these were notable 'firsts' - or hold similar sentimental value. For instance, my first model helicopter (a beautiful Thunder Tiger Raptor 30 V2) or about six pairs of clipless bicycle pedals (no idea how or why). Many of these items took me from my formerly obese teenage self to the competitive (but not necessarily quick!) cyclist I am today.
With that in mind, this is a difficult task. As I try to emulate Alex Supertramp and discard myself of everything I absolutely don't need, I realise that it's not possible. I love these memories of the past that are inherently attached to each object I am forced to keep - of the summer evenings we spent flying model aircraft in the park instead of revising for A-levels, of my first mountain bike race, of all the computers I've built over the years, of the many thousands of miles we cycled across that beautiful, beautiful continent. One day I'll come home and bring all of these things with me - not because they're worth anything or because they're necessarily useful but because of all the wonderful stories that they'll help me tell.
It becomes trickier when I start going back in time. I currently live at my parents' house and so am still surrounded by many of my childhood possessions. Several of these were hard-earned, through summer jobs and a lot of hustling on eBay. Others of these were notable 'firsts' - or hold similar sentimental value. For instance, my first model helicopter (a beautiful Thunder Tiger Raptor 30 V2) or about six pairs of clipless bicycle pedals (no idea how or why). Many of these items took me from my formerly obese teenage self to the competitive (but not necessarily quick!) cyclist I am today.
With that in mind, this is a difficult task. As I try to emulate Alex Supertramp and discard myself of everything I absolutely don't need, I realise that it's not possible. I love these memories of the past that are inherently attached to each object I am forced to keep - of the summer evenings we spent flying model aircraft in the park instead of revising for A-levels, of my first mountain bike race, of all the computers I've built over the years, of the many thousands of miles we cycled across that beautiful, beautiful continent. One day I'll come home and bring all of these things with me - not because they're worth anything or because they're necessarily useful but because of all the wonderful stories that they'll help me tell.
No comments yet!
In 10 days or so, I'll be returning to my secondary school, the Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School, to give a talk to parents and students in year 12 about Computer Science. This will be part of an annual careers evening - I'm not sure if they've had a 'representative' for Computer Science in the past but it is a very promising sign that they do this year.
Certainly when I was applying to university to study Computer Science almost eight years ago, there was very little in terms of specific application support. Even worse, three years ago, after graduating, when I went to go speak to the careers advisor at the time, he informed me that "students just don't want to study Computer Science, they just want to stick to professional careers like law, medicine and economics". Needless to say, I was astonished at his lack of foresight. When a student attends a careers evening and all they see are big stands and presentations on traditional professional careers, they're bound to give these more consideration. Equally so, a private school has the responsibility to equip its pupils suitably for changes in society at large - parents may not be aware that a career in technology nowadays can be quite fulfilling, stable and lucrative. (As a computer scientists, my peers and I had no trouble finding good work when graduating into a recession. The same can not be said of my economist friends, several of whom are underemployed or were forced into further study.)
Thankfully that careers adviser has since moved on and HABS is making good efforts to support and nurture any fledgling technologists in their student body. They have a capable head of IT who runs a lunchtime computing society where students are introduced to programming. He's also very current with the latest computing trends (they've already introduced Raspberry Pis into the syllabus) and has plans to adopt the new GCSE computing curriculum.
These are all very positive signs. When smart young pupils spend a considerable proportion of their free time using technology, whether it be their smartphone or their Playstation 3, and want to learn more about how these products are built, there's absolutely no reason why a forward thinking secondary school can't and shouldn't support them all the way.
The slide deck for my presentation is available here. Please feel free to re-use it under the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license.
Certainly when I was applying to university to study Computer Science almost eight years ago, there was very little in terms of specific application support. Even worse, three years ago, after graduating, when I went to go speak to the careers advisor at the time, he informed me that "students just don't want to study Computer Science, they just want to stick to professional careers like law, medicine and economics". Needless to say, I was astonished at his lack of foresight. When a student attends a careers evening and all they see are big stands and presentations on traditional professional careers, they're bound to give these more consideration. Equally so, a private school has the responsibility to equip its pupils suitably for changes in society at large - parents may not be aware that a career in technology nowadays can be quite fulfilling, stable and lucrative. (As a computer scientists, my peers and I had no trouble finding good work when graduating into a recession. The same can not be said of my economist friends, several of whom are underemployed or were forced into further study.)
Thankfully that careers adviser has since moved on and HABS is making good efforts to support and nurture any fledgling technologists in their student body. They have a capable head of IT who runs a lunchtime computing society where students are introduced to programming. He's also very current with the latest computing trends (they've already introduced Raspberry Pis into the syllabus) and has plans to adopt the new GCSE computing curriculum.
These are all very positive signs. When smart young pupils spend a considerable proportion of their free time using technology, whether it be their smartphone or their Playstation 3, and want to learn more about how these products are built, there's absolutely no reason why a forward thinking secondary school can't and shouldn't support them all the way.
The slide deck for my presentation is available here. Please feel free to re-use it under the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license.
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One of the aspects of my job that I most covet is the amount of new music I get to listen to (loosely in the name of 'work' ;-)).
Over the last few years, I've become a huge fan of reggae music. While I like the older and more classical stuff, I realised there were limited avenues to discover the music produced by more modern millennial artists.
With that in mind, my friend Siva (who is also a huge reggae fan) and I recently launched a new music blog to showcase and promote our favourite millennial reggae music.
Millennial Roots is online at http://millennialroots.net. We're hoping to post regular updates a couple of times a week at least.
You can also find us on Soundcloud, Twitter and Facebook.
Enjoy!
Over the last few years, I've become a huge fan of reggae music. While I like the older and more classical stuff, I realised there were limited avenues to discover the music produced by more modern millennial artists.
With that in mind, my friend Siva (who is also a huge reggae fan) and I recently launched a new music blog to showcase and promote our favourite millennial reggae music.
Millennial Roots is online at http://millennialroots.net. We're hoping to post regular updates a couple of times a week at least.
You can also find us on Soundcloud, Twitter and Facebook.
Enjoy!
No comments yet!
I'm a massive Fitbit fan - it satisfies my compulsive data gathering and obsessive fitness habits quite well. I'm actually on my fifth Fitbit. Originally I bought three, one for myself and one for each of my parents - although they never really got into the habit of using theirs. I lost my first Fitbit when walking through Bank underground station, my second one when helping a friend move flat and my third when skiing. Thankfully Fitbit replaced the third with a Fitbit Ultra which I lost somewhere on the journey between Vienna and London a few months ago. They again replaced this with their new Fitbit One - which is MUCH less prone to accidentally getting knocked off when your trousers brush past stationary objects.
With this in mind, generally my opinion of Fitbit's customer service is very very positive. I do quite like the company and while their API could be much better documented (I spent four hours over Christmas trying to figure out how to include their jar file hosted on Github from maven > >) - generally their documentation is pretty decent.
That said, when I looked up the instructions on how to calibrate my Fitbit, I came across an alarming inconsistency. My explanation of this was clear enough in the email I sent their customer support:
I was certain they mean step length - this shouldn't be a difficult thing to change - it involves changing a handful of field labels and their help documentation. Justifiably I was dismayed to receive their response - which was essentially a copy of their help page (that I originally linked them to) sent back to me.
Now, I'm all up for supporting these startups as much as possible (and from my experience at Last.fm, it's absolutely amazing how supportive some users can be) but I don't have the time or effort required to continue to push this relatively minor change through. Hopefully this post will help anyone curious about Fitbit's use of 'stride length' in the future.
With this in mind, generally my opinion of Fitbit's customer service is very very positive. I do quite like the company and while their API could be much better documented (I spent four hours over Christmas trying to figure out how to include their jar file hosted on Github from maven > >) - generally their documentation is pretty decent.
That said, when I looked up the instructions on how to calibrate my Fitbit, I came across an alarming inconsistency. My explanation of this was clear enough in the email I sent their customer support:
I'm a little bit confused about calibrating my stride length. The description given on this help page ( http://help.fitbit.com/customer/portal/articles/176045-how-do-i-measure-and-adjust-my-stride-length- ) is actually of what is traditionally called the step length.
Stride length would actually be double this - since stride measures the distance between consecutive steps by the same foot.
When setting the stride length in my Fitbit settings, am I supposed to use the stride length as discussed on that help page or should I use the correct and traditional definition of it - where I multiply the step length by 2.
For example, I took 210 steps to walk 160 metres. This means that, using Fitbit's definition of stride length, I have a stride length of 76 centimetres. However, the stride length for the average man is approximately 157 centimetres, and the step length for the average man is approximately 78 centimetres. My calculated stride length is actually closer to the average step length - which suggests Fitbit's explanation of stride length is incorrect - or that you actually mean step length.
I'd appreciate some clarification on this (and it would be helpful, if it is wrong, to update the help page).
Thanks,
Sunil
I was certain they mean step length - this shouldn't be a difficult thing to change - it involves changing a handful of field labels and their help documentation. Justifiably I was dismayed to receive their response - which was essentially a copy of their help page (that I originally linked them to) sent back to me.
Hi Sunil,
To clarify, the Fitbit definition of a stride is the distance you cover in a single step.
To reiterate the instructions on that page:
1. Go to a track or somewhere that you know the exact distance of.
2. Count your steps as you walk across that distance, making sure you travel at least 20 steps.
3. Divide the total distance (in feet) taken by the number of steps to get your stride length.
Your running stride can be calculated the same way, only by running a known distance rather than walking.
To adjust your stride length on your Dashboard, please do the following:
1. Log into your Fitbit.com Dashboard and click on the gear icon in the upper right corner of your Dashboard and select "Settings".
2. You will see a field for Stride Length and Running Stride Length. From here, you can manually enter your personal stride length. If you leave these blank, your profile will estimate these values based on your height and gender.
3. Click the "Update Profile" button to save your changes. Note that a sync will be required to update your tracker with your new stride measurements.
Let us know if this answers your question, or if we can provide further insight.
Sincerely,
Matthew and the Fitbit Team
Now, I'm all up for supporting these startups as much as possible (and from my experience at Last.fm, it's absolutely amazing how supportive some users can be) but I don't have the time or effort required to continue to push this relatively minor change through. Hopefully this post will help anyone curious about Fitbit's use of 'stride length' in the future.
No comments yet!
This is one of my favourite anecdotes - I've told it to so many people now, that I feel I may as well type it up to share with friends of the Geek on a Bicycle.
In 2007, a group of three friends and I ventured out to Alaska on a two week Trek America trip which took us in a figure of eight circuit some way into the Alaskan interior and back down south again to the peninsula. As 19 and 20 year olds, we wouldn't have been able to travel the vast Alaskan highways in our own car. We went at the beginning of September which is traditionally the last good part of Alaskan summer. In fact, a week after we left it started snowing heavily.
With a small surplus of cash from my summer internship, and in a photography craze, I had been lusting after the newly announced Samsung GX-10 D-SLR - this was a rebranded Pentax K10D but as Samsung's first SLR, discounted. Prices in London were pushing £450 but I held that camera in the back of mind. When we got to Anchorage, we stumbled across a famous camera shop - Stewart's Photo Shop. Amazingly, they had this camera in stock and with the GBP-USD rate being favourable, I walked out with the camera, an 8GB SD card and a case for under £400.
Alaska treated us to some beautiful weather that first week and armed with my shiny new camera, I took three hundred photos in the first three days. Additionally, having geeked out before the trip, I had a second smaller camera, a mobile phone and GPS tracker which I kept on the go concurrently - taking a GPS track as went with the intention of geo tagging photos afterwards.
On the third day, we rolled up to Maclaren River Lodge - a place that, to this day, is still my favourite place in the entire world. To get to the lodge, we travelled for a few hours off the paved highway down a gravelly mountain pass and over a deep ravine on a rickety wooden bridge. The lodge itself was beautifully built, run by an owner whose name eludes me. We visitors slept in a wooden bunk house and ate dinner in a warm and homely common room. Near to the lodge were kennels housing the owner's huskies - while unpacking our belongings we caught site of these Iditarod competitors in training as they pulled a quad bike along the road. On the night we arrived, the sun set in a hauntingly beautiful orange sky where the peach infused clouds rolled infinitely onwards in every direction.
The next morning we took an aluminium gunboat out to a enormous plain where we would trek out to a glacier, attempt to touch it and then return by kayak. Fuelling the gunboat was an amusingly terrifying experience as our loveable lodge owner smoked a cigar with one hand and poured liquid diesel into the gunboat's tank.
The trek itself was deceptively tiring, taking what seemed like forever to reach the glacier in the middle distance. Disappointingly, we weren't able to touch the glacier itself but I did grab a nice handful of its meltwater. The plain we trekked over was so far from actual civilisation that it was possibly the single most awe inspiring place I have ever been to. The feeling of being almost completely and utterly alone was sublime.
In the spirit of our Alaskan adventure, my group of four friends and a couple of others elected to canoe back to the camp, a three hour paddle downriver versus a thirty minute boat ride back. By the time we returned to the river bank where we had first stepped off the gun boat, the rest of the group had left and the only sign of their presence were a number of upturned canoes and a pile of paddles. It was nearing early evening with the sun low in the sky and we had calculated that we would reach camp just as it became dark.
The river itself was fairly shallow, but being so close to a melting glacier, was flowing fairly quickly. About five to ten metres wide, it was guided along by gravelly banks beyond which were summery meadows of metre high grass and the occasional bush.
My good friend Aamod and I decided to pair up. We flipped our canoe, placed in on the surface of the water and slowly got in. There were two dry compartments - fore and aft. Aamod, being super wary of his gear getting wet had used up our camp's supply of plastic sandwich bags to individually wrap each of his possessions. He further extended this protection by locking his bag within the fore compartment. Despite having several hundred pounds worth of technology in my day bag, I failed to seal the aft compartment closed after placing my bag in there.
As we pushed off, I was adamant that I knew the correct form for steering a canoe, having spent the previous year rowing at my university college. I thought that if we wanted to turn right, we should paddle on the left. Aamod, having been canoeing (I hasten to add - unsuccessfully) before, was convinced that paddling on the right side would accomplish this. In some ways, we were both right - except that instead of both paddling on the same side, one person should have held his oar up, to slow the boat down.
We began our journey by meandering from bank to bank, arguing with each other over the correct steering technique and making little headway. Still, the river moved quickly and we were moving downstream at a respectable rate.
Six minutes into the journey, our meandering took an unfortunate turn (quite literally) and we made contact with a ridge of gravel amidst the river. Were it the bank, we would likely have just bounced off and head back towards the other side of the river. Unfortunately, the shape of the mid-river ridge and the angle with which we struck it (and Newton's 3rd Law) meant that our canoe flipped over almost immediately. Aamod and I fell straight into the icy water, followed by my bag containing my two cameras, phone and GPS tracker.
My immediate reaction to this was to swear as loudly as possible. Having heard our cries and the considerable splash of two overweight (at the time) young men falling into the water, our friends turned around. Amused, they laughed and took photos.
It was no laughing matter however and with the river speed pushing 17 miles per hour (a fact revealed by the six minutes of GPS data I had captured and was later able to analyse) it was a struggle to even stand up in the shallow river. After much fumbling of our feet, Aamod and I managed to hold our positions, with me holding the paddle in my right arm and the boat with my left upstream and Aamod standing downstream of the bow of the boat.
The next step was to try and flip the boat to its correct orientation. This in itself was remarkably easy but as the corrected boat gained a V profile in the fast moving water, it began to accelerate downstream. Unfortunately, Aamod was standing downstream of the boat and as it picked up speed, it continued at pace into his crotch. I was still holding the rear of the boat but Aamod, now in considerable pain, pitched over and let go of the front of the boat.
With Aamod's crotch now no longer stopping the boat from moving downstream, it continued with the water and pulled me along with it. With my boots struggling to gain any traction on the riverbed, I flipped the canoe in an attempt to get it to slow down. This helped and I was able to stop the canoe from moving as quickly as it was but this left me in an undesirable position, trapped under the boat in an air pocket that was quickly filling up with water. The boat continued to move with the water and whilst I tried to dig my heels into the gravelly floor of the river, the force of the river was too much.
Realising at this stage that I could very possibly drown if trapped under the boat for much longer, I jumped up with all my might and pushed the boat up and over to the side. The water quickly took hold of it again and carried it off away from us. By this point Aamod had begun to make a move for the damned ridge in the middle of the river and I did the same.
Crawling up onto the ridge, we were both soaked and quickly started shivering. Luckily we were the penultimate canoe in our group and the last canoe pulled over as soon as they saw us. I don't remember much of the next three hours except that it was extremely cold and it quickly grew dark. One of the two canoeists who pulled over was a retired high school English teacher called Buzz who told us about how he had once travelled to London, on a trip to Europe in his early 20s (in the 60s). I can't imagine how different it must be now. He also showed us his photos on his SLR and mentioned that he had almost run out of space on his SD card and would soon buy another to put photos on - since he didn't own a computer. Wow.
I couldn't help but laugh at my misfortune with my D-SLR while we waited for help. As it became dark, Aamod and I started getting colder and colder. We sheltered under the upturned canoe. Our clothes refused to dry with any sort of speed and the ridge itself, being about 10 feet long and 3 feet wide, didn't offer enough space to move and generate heat.
About three hours later, we heard a distant droning noise. Help, we hoped. The shiny aluminium gunboat grew closer and perched on the bow of the boat was the lodge owner's husky - nose out and searching for us. The lodge owner piloted his gunboat, cigar in mouth and with a concerned look on his face. Next to him was our tour guide. Hanging out of the rear of the boat was our canoe and paddle. They pulled up, wrapped us up in some warm blankets and fed us some watery instant hot chocolate.
The journey back was a blur - under the dark night sky, the banks of the river became indistinguishable and I wasn't in any sort of mood to pay attention to anything but getting warmer. Soon the lights of the lodge appeared in the distance and before we knew it, we were home, having missed dinner and having been excused from having to do the washing up! I was relieved to hear that my bag had been recovered - trying to get a police report to verify that I had lost my camera for the insurance company in the middle of the Alaskan outback would have been a very difficult task indeed.
The rest of the trip was beautiful but I have no photos of my own of the places we visited. I'll go back one day and continue the canoe trip - although this time I'll both waterproof my gear and perhaps agree with Aamod on how best to steer downstream :-).
The GPS track of that fateful journey:
View Larger Map
The picture my friends snapped as they were busy laughing at us:
In 2007, a group of three friends and I ventured out to Alaska on a two week Trek America trip which took us in a figure of eight circuit some way into the Alaskan interior and back down south again to the peninsula. As 19 and 20 year olds, we wouldn't have been able to travel the vast Alaskan highways in our own car. We went at the beginning of September which is traditionally the last good part of Alaskan summer. In fact, a week after we left it started snowing heavily.
With a small surplus of cash from my summer internship, and in a photography craze, I had been lusting after the newly announced Samsung GX-10 D-SLR - this was a rebranded Pentax K10D but as Samsung's first SLR, discounted. Prices in London were pushing £450 but I held that camera in the back of mind. When we got to Anchorage, we stumbled across a famous camera shop - Stewart's Photo Shop. Amazingly, they had this camera in stock and with the GBP-USD rate being favourable, I walked out with the camera, an 8GB SD card and a case for under £400.
Alaska treated us to some beautiful weather that first week and armed with my shiny new camera, I took three hundred photos in the first three days. Additionally, having geeked out before the trip, I had a second smaller camera, a mobile phone and GPS tracker which I kept on the go concurrently - taking a GPS track as went with the intention of geo tagging photos afterwards.
On the third day, we rolled up to Maclaren River Lodge - a place that, to this day, is still my favourite place in the entire world. To get to the lodge, we travelled for a few hours off the paved highway down a gravelly mountain pass and over a deep ravine on a rickety wooden bridge. The lodge itself was beautifully built, run by an owner whose name eludes me. We visitors slept in a wooden bunk house and ate dinner in a warm and homely common room. Near to the lodge were kennels housing the owner's huskies - while unpacking our belongings we caught site of these Iditarod competitors in training as they pulled a quad bike along the road. On the night we arrived, the sun set in a hauntingly beautiful orange sky where the peach infused clouds rolled infinitely onwards in every direction.
The next morning we took an aluminium gunboat out to a enormous plain where we would trek out to a glacier, attempt to touch it and then return by kayak. Fuelling the gunboat was an amusingly terrifying experience as our loveable lodge owner smoked a cigar with one hand and poured liquid diesel into the gunboat's tank.
The trek itself was deceptively tiring, taking what seemed like forever to reach the glacier in the middle distance. Disappointingly, we weren't able to touch the glacier itself but I did grab a nice handful of its meltwater. The plain we trekked over was so far from actual civilisation that it was possibly the single most awe inspiring place I have ever been to. The feeling of being almost completely and utterly alone was sublime.
In the spirit of our Alaskan adventure, my group of four friends and a couple of others elected to canoe back to the camp, a three hour paddle downriver versus a thirty minute boat ride back. By the time we returned to the river bank where we had first stepped off the gun boat, the rest of the group had left and the only sign of their presence were a number of upturned canoes and a pile of paddles. It was nearing early evening with the sun low in the sky and we had calculated that we would reach camp just as it became dark.
The river itself was fairly shallow, but being so close to a melting glacier, was flowing fairly quickly. About five to ten metres wide, it was guided along by gravelly banks beyond which were summery meadows of metre high grass and the occasional bush.
My good friend Aamod and I decided to pair up. We flipped our canoe, placed in on the surface of the water and slowly got in. There were two dry compartments - fore and aft. Aamod, being super wary of his gear getting wet had used up our camp's supply of plastic sandwich bags to individually wrap each of his possessions. He further extended this protection by locking his bag within the fore compartment. Despite having several hundred pounds worth of technology in my day bag, I failed to seal the aft compartment closed after placing my bag in there.
As we pushed off, I was adamant that I knew the correct form for steering a canoe, having spent the previous year rowing at my university college. I thought that if we wanted to turn right, we should paddle on the left. Aamod, having been canoeing (I hasten to add - unsuccessfully) before, was convinced that paddling on the right side would accomplish this. In some ways, we were both right - except that instead of both paddling on the same side, one person should have held his oar up, to slow the boat down.
We began our journey by meandering from bank to bank, arguing with each other over the correct steering technique and making little headway. Still, the river moved quickly and we were moving downstream at a respectable rate.
Six minutes into the journey, our meandering took an unfortunate turn (quite literally) and we made contact with a ridge of gravel amidst the river. Were it the bank, we would likely have just bounced off and head back towards the other side of the river. Unfortunately, the shape of the mid-river ridge and the angle with which we struck it (and Newton's 3rd Law) meant that our canoe flipped over almost immediately. Aamod and I fell straight into the icy water, followed by my bag containing my two cameras, phone and GPS tracker.
My immediate reaction to this was to swear as loudly as possible. Having heard our cries and the considerable splash of two overweight (at the time) young men falling into the water, our friends turned around. Amused, they laughed and took photos.
It was no laughing matter however and with the river speed pushing 17 miles per hour (a fact revealed by the six minutes of GPS data I had captured and was later able to analyse) it was a struggle to even stand up in the shallow river. After much fumbling of our feet, Aamod and I managed to hold our positions, with me holding the paddle in my right arm and the boat with my left upstream and Aamod standing downstream of the bow of the boat.
The next step was to try and flip the boat to its correct orientation. This in itself was remarkably easy but as the corrected boat gained a V profile in the fast moving water, it began to accelerate downstream. Unfortunately, Aamod was standing downstream of the boat and as it picked up speed, it continued at pace into his crotch. I was still holding the rear of the boat but Aamod, now in considerable pain, pitched over and let go of the front of the boat.
With Aamod's crotch now no longer stopping the boat from moving downstream, it continued with the water and pulled me along with it. With my boots struggling to gain any traction on the riverbed, I flipped the canoe in an attempt to get it to slow down. This helped and I was able to stop the canoe from moving as quickly as it was but this left me in an undesirable position, trapped under the boat in an air pocket that was quickly filling up with water. The boat continued to move with the water and whilst I tried to dig my heels into the gravelly floor of the river, the force of the river was too much.
Realising at this stage that I could very possibly drown if trapped under the boat for much longer, I jumped up with all my might and pushed the boat up and over to the side. The water quickly took hold of it again and carried it off away from us. By this point Aamod had begun to make a move for the damned ridge in the middle of the river and I did the same.
Crawling up onto the ridge, we were both soaked and quickly started shivering. Luckily we were the penultimate canoe in our group and the last canoe pulled over as soon as they saw us. I don't remember much of the next three hours except that it was extremely cold and it quickly grew dark. One of the two canoeists who pulled over was a retired high school English teacher called Buzz who told us about how he had once travelled to London, on a trip to Europe in his early 20s (in the 60s). I can't imagine how different it must be now. He also showed us his photos on his SLR and mentioned that he had almost run out of space on his SD card and would soon buy another to put photos on - since he didn't own a computer. Wow.
I couldn't help but laugh at my misfortune with my D-SLR while we waited for help. As it became dark, Aamod and I started getting colder and colder. We sheltered under the upturned canoe. Our clothes refused to dry with any sort of speed and the ridge itself, being about 10 feet long and 3 feet wide, didn't offer enough space to move and generate heat.
About three hours later, we heard a distant droning noise. Help, we hoped. The shiny aluminium gunboat grew closer and perched on the bow of the boat was the lodge owner's husky - nose out and searching for us. The lodge owner piloted his gunboat, cigar in mouth and with a concerned look on his face. Next to him was our tour guide. Hanging out of the rear of the boat was our canoe and paddle. They pulled up, wrapped us up in some warm blankets and fed us some watery instant hot chocolate.
The journey back was a blur - under the dark night sky, the banks of the river became indistinguishable and I wasn't in any sort of mood to pay attention to anything but getting warmer. Soon the lights of the lodge appeared in the distance and before we knew it, we were home, having missed dinner and having been excused from having to do the washing up! I was relieved to hear that my bag had been recovered - trying to get a police report to verify that I had lost my camera for the insurance company in the middle of the Alaskan outback would have been a very difficult task indeed.
The rest of the trip was beautiful but I have no photos of my own of the places we visited. I'll go back one day and continue the canoe trip - although this time I'll both waterproof my gear and perhaps agree with Aamod on how best to steer downstream :-).
The GPS track of that fateful journey:
View Larger Map
The picture my friends snapped as they were busy laughing at us:
Don Donner II wrote at 10:03 pm on Sat 20th Apr -
Amazing! Things don't change much in Alaska so I am sure you can replicate that journey and continue
where you 'left off'. 2017...here it comes...
where you 'left off'. 2017...here it comes...
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I'm writing this on the eve of the date that Stanford has traditionally notified applicants about their admissions decisions for the Master of Science in computer science course. I'm expecting to get rejected again this year - this is the second time I've applied for the program. However, what I thought might be interesting is to shed some light on what kind of candidate you have to be to get into this program. The obvious caveat being that I haven't navigated the process successfully - so this might not be accurate. Additionally, this is an external view of the process - so it's likely to be misinformed.
What value I can add though, is that I've read through a considerable number of profiles from applicants who have successfully been admitted to Stanford. I've also been in touch with several of these and learnt more about their background. I've applied twice and I've read just about everything that there could possibly be online about the process, and several actual books too. For a lot of the last year, it's all that's been on my mind (unhealthy, and unfortunate for my friends and family). I've also been in touch with a family friend who is a professor of a computer science graduate program at a state university. This advice will apply to many other graduate schools too - I picked Stanford since it's the only one of the big four that has an established and popular general computer science Master's program. (Carnegie Mellon started theirs only a couple of years ago, and Berkeley only offers a Master's of Engineering program. MIT only admits applicants with a PhD as their degree objective.)
This post isn't mean to put you off applying to Stanford - but it's mean to bring you down to the ground and help you understand the harsh and competitive reality of applying to the number 1 US Master's program in computer science so that you can make an informed decision about whether you want to spend your $125 there (and many hours of your time applying).
The first thing to note is that there are about 700 applications for approximately 120 offers (extrapolating based on data available here). Nearly everyone who gets an offer takes it. Rather than taking this as 6 people for every place, think about it as there being 580 other applicants who you must be better than in order to get admitted. This figure includes HCP applicants who, more often than not, will have taken NDO classes (see the next section) and hence will have a slight advantage over external applicants.
While this pool of applicants is reasonably self selecting (i.e. most will be incredibly competitive) - there do seem to be a large number of unqualified people who apply simply on the back of the Stanford name. This undoubtedly makes the admissions committee's job much harder and increases the chance of your application being a false negative - i.e. rejected despite being perfectly well qualified.
This is how I imagine the committee's evaluation process to be, based on what I've read around the interweb (and on this paper).
Firstly, applications are pre-screened for those that don't meet a minimum GRE and GPA threshold (see the next two sections).
Secondly, some (but not all) of the committee will look at each application and assign it a score. These scores are normalised between members so that the distribution of scores are roughly equivalent. These scores are then summed to give an overall score for the applicant. Based on specific thresholds, applications are either accepted or rejected. This threshold is different for different applications - it is higher to external applicants than for internal applicants who have previously studied at Stanford. For the Stanford MS CS program, HCP applicants (their part time option for people who work in the Bay Area) are considered together with full time applicants. Since their primary goal is to evaluate how well you'll do at Stanford level coursework, having taken NDO (non-degree option) classes and having scored well in them suggests you will cope and hence there is a lower threshold for these applicants. See this ancient email for more information.
An easy way to get ahead in the Stanford applications game is to take a handful of NDO classes online and do well in them. These are not cheap however, especially compared to the plethora of free MOOCs available online.
Stanford themselves state on their FAQ page that a strong application would include GRE scores in the 90th percentile. The first time I applied, my scores were in the 89th and 84th percentile - high but not high enough. Unless every other aspect of your application is stellar, I wouldn't bother applying with scores that aren't in the 90th percentile (a fact that I realised after my first rejection). This isn't an impossible score to achieve - it just requires a month or more of reasonable studying. Doing well on the GRE is all about practice - and if you're unable to do well on the GRE after a significant amount of practice, then perhaps graduate school isn't for you. Before applying for the second time, I studied a little harder and was able to bump my scores up to the 93rd and 96th percentile without much difficulty.
The successful applicants I've seen generally have a stellar GPA (there are exceptions of course, but I'll talk about that in a moment). Successful US applicants seem to mainly have GPAs greater than 3.6 / 4.0. International applicants tend to be in the top segment of their class. Be wary if you're an international student at a university like Oxford or Cambridge - your 1st class 70% mark in your papers will translate badly (even though the admissions committee are aware of the different grading scales) - a 70% in an American university translates, I'm told, to a C grade. This does not reflect well at all. Another caveat (which I failed at foreseeing) was that Stanford's FAQ page suggests putting in the minimum required GPA if your undergraduate university doesn't provide one. I left this blank which defaults to 0.0. If any sort of harsh automated filter is used - my application will probably go straight to the rejection pile.
A note on automated filters - from what I've read (and it's not clear whether Stanford has implemented these in their admissions workflow and in what form), filters will only discard your application if you fail on both the minimum required GPA and any minimum required GRE. Harsh but an easy way for the admissions committee to focus on the known top applicants. Yes, it's unfair - as we all know, many academically challenged applicants struggled at university and they've gone on to make millions or do world changing deeds - but computer science graduate schools can afford to be this selective.
There are just so many applicants that they don't need to take bets - they just want people who they know will cope with their courses, and so they use past performance as an indicator of future performance. Some universities are harsher than this than others - University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is notorious for wanting incoming students to have a near 4.0 GPA, even for their professional MCS program. Of course this puts applicants from highly competitive universities at a disadvantage - while I struggled to maintain high exam marks at Cambridge, I could have studied at other universities where examinations aren't graded on a curve and done extremely well.
Additionally, note that university ranking has much less of an effect than you might hope. It matters less where you went than how well you did there. They won't take a mediocre applicant from a top 10 university over a great applicant from a top 50 university - all other things being equal.
Additionally, you may think - it's OK, I didn't do so well during my time at university but I have great extra-curriculars! That's perfect - if you're applying for an MBA program. I cycled for Cambridge University and across a frickin' continent - that's great, but Stanford probably doesn't really care. Sure, you may have made it to Everest Base Camp or the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro - but that has little bearing on how well you're going to do in their graduate level courses (although it will stead you well in all those future walking meetings that technology companies are beginning to love).
What Stanford and other top computer science graduate schools want to see, however, is that you are a great computer scientist. For instance - you've started technology companies in your spare time (which might explain low grades) or you're a programming competition fanatic. If you're going for a PhD program, they want to see that you're a good researcher - so you need to have published at least some good quality research. There's a certain irony in the fact that you need to have research experience in order to gain admission to a course where you effectively learn how to research but that's the changing shape of the world these days.
Research experience is extremely beneficial although not mandatory. Academics live mainly to publish papers, at least it seems that way in the US. If you've written a paper, you're effectively speaking their language. It's incredibly hard to publish a paper when you're not at university (unless you're lucky to be in a situation where you can do so through) - and still very hard to do so while an undergraduate student. It helps a lot though.
Another large pit ripe for falling into, especially applicable to international students - is that letters of recommendation are preferably written by a professor who knows you well. Admissions committees view the source of the letters in this order: professor they know > professor they don't know > general academic (lecturer, etc.) > graduate student > line manager > colleague. This is because a professor's academic reputation is at stake when they write a letter of recommendation - so logic dictates they are more likely to be honest. They also have a better understanding of what skills are required at graduate school.
This is incredibly difficult - at most British universities, lecturers have a hands off approach to teaching outside of lectures themselves. I know just a single professor well enough from Cambridge - who was an unreliable letter writer at best and a disastrous letter writer at worst (in the last application round he spent a total of 17 minutes on one of my letters). My strategy has been to solicit strong letters from less prestigious non-academic letter writers who know me well - such as my current and previous manager, both of whom had good things to say about me. I figure a very strong letter from someone less well known is better than a nondescript letter from a professor who barely knew you.
American letter writers are much more effusive in how they write about candidates - be aware of this when you brief your letter writers. For example, everything 'good' should be 'great' and so on. Furthermore, brief them on the sort of content that they might want to include - on the basis that the admissions committee want to know how well you will do at graduate school.
The categories I asked my writers to mention were:
Additionally, if you have a low GPA - or some overt blip in your performance, it's very helpful to get a letter writer who knew at the time to acknowledge it.
The problem with my statement of purpose essay and those written by most other applicants is that it's less of a statement of purpose and more of a resume in prose form.
What I'm going to say next is painfully obvious, yet is something that nearly all of us mess up. Make your statement of purpose an actual statement of purpose! You need to say what you actually plan to do - why you applied, what you plan to do while enrolled (what courses? what research aims?) and what you plan to do after graduating.
You should aim to specialise each essay as much as possible (and SRSLY, if you copy and paste, make sure you check for errors). This means mentioning courses that you would like to study, professors that you would like to study or research with and why that particular program is perfect for you.
Start this early - the process of writing the essay may help you realise that you actually probably don't want to study there so much. This is helpful because it means you'll either save yourself the application fee or it will sting slightly less when/if you get rejected. Additionally, it's one of the few aspects of the application that is totally in your control so only a fool wouldn't make full use of this advantage.
One final tip - think of your essay as being similar to a cover letter. Instead of saying why you want a particular job and using examples from your resume to back it up, you're saying why you should be admitted to particular program and backing it up with examples from your life.
Try not to fixate too much on the US News graduate school rankings. It's not a bad place to start - but you need to actually look at the programs and departments in depth before applying. I see so many applicants who blindly pick the top 10 and apply to these - this is a recipe for failure. Look at the credits required for graduation and try to compose an actual program of courses for yourself (as best you can). I tried this with several universities and realised that actually they didn't offer anything I wanted to study.
A note on professional programs versus academic programs. Professional programs are definitely easier to get admission into than academic programs. Academic Master's are used by students with average to good profiles to get valuable (research) experience and brush up their GPA before applying for a PhD program. Generally admissions committees for top departments seem to only accept applicants with a PhD (or a career in academia) as their career objective to academic Master's programs - unless you have a particularly strong background or there is an otherwise compelling reason to admit you. I fell into this trap this year - and was quickly rejected by many of the academic programs I had applied to.
If you're going for a Master's program and you can't afford to - then reconsider strongly whether it's worth applying to many of the top programs. As I said, they are so oversubscribed that they don't need to offer financial aid to attract students and nearly always won't. Those that do, for example the University of Wisconsin at Madison - are considerably more oversubscribed. Last year they received 1220 applicants for both PhD and Master's programs - and fill fewer places than Stanford (about 70 Master's students graduate per year).
In order to stress the point about over-subscription - it will be extremely difficult to get a reply from the admissions office for many of the top universities during application season. They will not pick up the phone or reply to emails. You will have more luck outside of September to April, but they're still likely to be very brusque. If you're applying for a professional program, you'll have a better chance of talking to someone - since these programs are more profitable for the university and therefore they provide better support for applicants. If you get rejected from a top university, don't expect any feedback - and don't expect them to provide much in the way of useful advice if you do manage to talk to someone. Your best bet is one of the many graduate forums (see the resources section at the end of this post).
When it comes to decisions, universities send out their decisions at a similar date yearly. You should be aware that often universities will send out all of their acceptances first and often wait for up to six weeks before sending out rejections. This gives them the flexibility to offer any quickly rejected offers to other applicants - although this is rare, since most applicants will sit on offers until they all come in. If you see a rash of acceptances on one of the decisions trackers online and you haven't heard anything within a day or two - assume you've been rejected, it's better for your sanity. Some universities (such as UT Austin) are particularly evil - and don't send out rejections at all.
Finally, it's worth saying that you should consider what area you want to study carefully. I want to study artificial intelligence and I've always wanted to study this. There were a couple of courses taught at Cambridge but I didn't get to immerse myself in the way that I hoped and time constraints made it very difficult to devote enough attention to them. That said, my employment experience and extra-curriculars are unrelated to the field. This loops back to what I said earlier - in order to gain admission for a course to learn about AI (or any other specialization) - they want to see experience in AI. This matters less so for general computer science courses but if you're applying to say CMU's Robotics Institute (as I did) - you haven't got a chance without relevant experience.
Additionally, some areas are vastly more popular than others. I'd assume that admissions committees want to balance their classes as much as possible, so if you apply for AI/Machine Learning/Robotics or some similarly oversubscribed area - BE WARY! Competition within that area will be tougher (on an absolute numbers basis). Bear in mind that you can always choose courses from a different specialisation to the one you apply for.
To conclude - I apologise if I sound overly cynical - I just want to be realistic about your chances (and mine!). With the economy pushing graduates onto higher education across all subjects and the considerable salary differential (or, the perception of one) between technology jobs in the United States and elsewhere, there are more applicants than ever before. It's even harder if you're an international applicant as most of us are. There's some great advice on the internet but much of it was written a few years ago, and as any good technologist knows, things change so very quickly.
Good luck with your application, I wish you all the best. If you have any questions or feedback, please message me on The Grad Cafe. I can't promise to reply but I will try.
I've also written about the economics of getting a Master's degree here, as well as about adequate preparation for incoming robotics Master's students. Finally, another post about employability with a Master of Engineering degree.
This post is published under the Creative Commmons BY-NC-SA license. Please feel free to share it along with with a link back to this page.
On Google+ here.
What value I can add though, is that I've read through a considerable number of profiles from applicants who have successfully been admitted to Stanford. I've also been in touch with several of these and learnt more about their background. I've applied twice and I've read just about everything that there could possibly be online about the process, and several actual books too. For a lot of the last year, it's all that's been on my mind (unhealthy, and unfortunate for my friends and family). I've also been in touch with a family friend who is a professor of a computer science graduate program at a state university. This advice will apply to many other graduate schools too - I picked Stanford since it's the only one of the big four that has an established and popular general computer science Master's program. (Carnegie Mellon started theirs only a couple of years ago, and Berkeley only offers a Master's of Engineering program. MIT only admits applicants with a PhD as their degree objective.)
This post isn't mean to put you off applying to Stanford - but it's mean to bring you down to the ground and help you understand the harsh and competitive reality of applying to the number 1 US Master's program in computer science so that you can make an informed decision about whether you want to spend your $125 there (and many hours of your time applying).
The Competition
The first thing to note is that there are about 700 applications for approximately 120 offers (extrapolating based on data available here). Nearly everyone who gets an offer takes it. Rather than taking this as 6 people for every place, think about it as there being 580 other applicants who you must be better than in order to get admitted. This figure includes HCP applicants who, more often than not, will have taken NDO classes (see the next section) and hence will have a slight advantage over external applicants.
While this pool of applicants is reasonably self selecting (i.e. most will be incredibly competitive) - there do seem to be a large number of unqualified people who apply simply on the back of the Stanford name. This undoubtedly makes the admissions committee's job much harder and increases the chance of your application being a false negative - i.e. rejected despite being perfectly well qualified.
The Process
This is how I imagine the committee's evaluation process to be, based on what I've read around the interweb (and on this paper).
Firstly, applications are pre-screened for those that don't meet a minimum GRE and GPA threshold (see the next two sections).
Secondly, some (but not all) of the committee will look at each application and assign it a score. These scores are normalised between members so that the distribution of scores are roughly equivalent. These scores are then summed to give an overall score for the applicant. Based on specific thresholds, applications are either accepted or rejected. This threshold is different for different applications - it is higher to external applicants than for internal applicants who have previously studied at Stanford. For the Stanford MS CS program, HCP applicants (their part time option for people who work in the Bay Area) are considered together with full time applicants. Since their primary goal is to evaluate how well you'll do at Stanford level coursework, having taken NDO (non-degree option) classes and having scored well in them suggests you will cope and hence there is a lower threshold for these applicants. See this ancient email for more information.
An easy way to get ahead in the Stanford applications game is to take a handful of NDO classes online and do well in them. These are not cheap however, especially compared to the plethora of free MOOCs available online.
GRE
Stanford themselves state on their FAQ page that a strong application would include GRE scores in the 90th percentile. The first time I applied, my scores were in the 89th and 84th percentile - high but not high enough. Unless every other aspect of your application is stellar, I wouldn't bother applying with scores that aren't in the 90th percentile (a fact that I realised after my first rejection). This isn't an impossible score to achieve - it just requires a month or more of reasonable studying. Doing well on the GRE is all about practice - and if you're unable to do well on the GRE after a significant amount of practice, then perhaps graduate school isn't for you. Before applying for the second time, I studied a little harder and was able to bump my scores up to the 93rd and 96th percentile without much difficulty.
Grade Point Average
The successful applicants I've seen generally have a stellar GPA (there are exceptions of course, but I'll talk about that in a moment). Successful US applicants seem to mainly have GPAs greater than 3.6 / 4.0. International applicants tend to be in the top segment of their class. Be wary if you're an international student at a university like Oxford or Cambridge - your 1st class 70% mark in your papers will translate badly (even though the admissions committee are aware of the different grading scales) - a 70% in an American university translates, I'm told, to a C grade. This does not reflect well at all. Another caveat (which I failed at foreseeing) was that Stanford's FAQ page suggests putting in the minimum required GPA if your undergraduate university doesn't provide one. I left this blank which defaults to 0.0. If any sort of harsh automated filter is used - my application will probably go straight to the rejection pile.
A note on automated filters - from what I've read (and it's not clear whether Stanford has implemented these in their admissions workflow and in what form), filters will only discard your application if you fail on both the minimum required GPA and any minimum required GRE. Harsh but an easy way for the admissions committee to focus on the known top applicants. Yes, it's unfair - as we all know, many academically challenged applicants struggled at university and they've gone on to make millions or do world changing deeds - but computer science graduate schools can afford to be this selective.
There are just so many applicants that they don't need to take bets - they just want people who they know will cope with their courses, and so they use past performance as an indicator of future performance. Some universities are harsher than this than others - University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is notorious for wanting incoming students to have a near 4.0 GPA, even for their professional MCS program. Of course this puts applicants from highly competitive universities at a disadvantage - while I struggled to maintain high exam marks at Cambridge, I could have studied at other universities where examinations aren't graded on a curve and done extremely well.
Additionally, note that university ranking has much less of an effect than you might hope. It matters less where you went than how well you did there. They won't take a mediocre applicant from a top 10 university over a great applicant from a top 50 university - all other things being equal.
Extra-Curricular
Additionally, you may think - it's OK, I didn't do so well during my time at university but I have great extra-curriculars! That's perfect - if you're applying for an MBA program. I cycled for Cambridge University and across a frickin' continent - that's great, but Stanford probably doesn't really care. Sure, you may have made it to Everest Base Camp or the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro - but that has little bearing on how well you're going to do in their graduate level courses (although it will stead you well in all those future walking meetings that technology companies are beginning to love).
What Stanford and other top computer science graduate schools want to see, however, is that you are a great computer scientist. For instance - you've started technology companies in your spare time (which might explain low grades) or you're a programming competition fanatic. If you're going for a PhD program, they want to see that you're a good researcher - so you need to have published at least some good quality research. There's a certain irony in the fact that you need to have research experience in order to gain admission to a course where you effectively learn how to research but that's the changing shape of the world these days.
Research experience is extremely beneficial although not mandatory. Academics live mainly to publish papers, at least it seems that way in the US. If you've written a paper, you're effectively speaking their language. It's incredibly hard to publish a paper when you're not at university (unless you're lucky to be in a situation where you can do so through) - and still very hard to do so while an undergraduate student. It helps a lot though.
Letters of Recommendation
Another large pit ripe for falling into, especially applicable to international students - is that letters of recommendation are preferably written by a professor who knows you well. Admissions committees view the source of the letters in this order: professor they know > professor they don't know > general academic (lecturer, etc.) > graduate student > line manager > colleague. This is because a professor's academic reputation is at stake when they write a letter of recommendation - so logic dictates they are more likely to be honest. They also have a better understanding of what skills are required at graduate school.
This is incredibly difficult - at most British universities, lecturers have a hands off approach to teaching outside of lectures themselves. I know just a single professor well enough from Cambridge - who was an unreliable letter writer at best and a disastrous letter writer at worst (in the last application round he spent a total of 17 minutes on one of my letters). My strategy has been to solicit strong letters from less prestigious non-academic letter writers who know me well - such as my current and previous manager, both of whom had good things to say about me. I figure a very strong letter from someone less well known is better than a nondescript letter from a professor who barely knew you.
American letter writers are much more effusive in how they write about candidates - be aware of this when you brief your letter writers. For example, everything 'good' should be 'great' and so on. Furthermore, brief them on the sort of content that they might want to include - on the basis that the admissions committee want to know how well you will do at graduate school.
The categories I asked my writers to mention were:
- Research ability / ability to succeed at graduate level
- Comparison against peers of a similar experience level
- Hard examples of projects I've done (well)
- Leadership skills, passion, work habits, character, social skills, writing skills, presentation skills and other accomplishments
Additionally, if you have a low GPA - or some overt blip in your performance, it's very helpful to get a letter writer who knew at the time to acknowledge it.
Statement of Purpose
The problem with my statement of purpose essay and those written by most other applicants is that it's less of a statement of purpose and more of a resume in prose form.
What I'm going to say next is painfully obvious, yet is something that nearly all of us mess up. Make your statement of purpose an actual statement of purpose! You need to say what you actually plan to do - why you applied, what you plan to do while enrolled (what courses? what research aims?) and what you plan to do after graduating.
You should aim to specialise each essay as much as possible (and SRSLY, if you copy and paste, make sure you check for errors). This means mentioning courses that you would like to study, professors that you would like to study or research with and why that particular program is perfect for you.
Start this early - the process of writing the essay may help you realise that you actually probably don't want to study there so much. This is helpful because it means you'll either save yourself the application fee or it will sting slightly less when/if you get rejected. Additionally, it's one of the few aspects of the application that is totally in your control so only a fool wouldn't make full use of this advantage.
One final tip - think of your essay as being similar to a cover letter. Instead of saying why you want a particular job and using examples from your resume to back it up, you're saying why you should be admitted to particular program and backing it up with examples from your life.
Rankings
Try not to fixate too much on the US News graduate school rankings. It's not a bad place to start - but you need to actually look at the programs and departments in depth before applying. I see so many applicants who blindly pick the top 10 and apply to these - this is a recipe for failure. Look at the credits required for graduation and try to compose an actual program of courses for yourself (as best you can). I tried this with several universities and realised that actually they didn't offer anything I wanted to study.
Professional versus Academic Programs
A note on professional programs versus academic programs. Professional programs are definitely easier to get admission into than academic programs. Academic Master's are used by students with average to good profiles to get valuable (research) experience and brush up their GPA before applying for a PhD program. Generally admissions committees for top departments seem to only accept applicants with a PhD (or a career in academia) as their career objective to academic Master's programs - unless you have a particularly strong background or there is an otherwise compelling reason to admit you. I fell into this trap this year - and was quickly rejected by many of the academic programs I had applied to.
Finances
If you're going for a Master's program and you can't afford to - then reconsider strongly whether it's worth applying to many of the top programs. As I said, they are so oversubscribed that they don't need to offer financial aid to attract students and nearly always won't. Those that do, for example the University of Wisconsin at Madison - are considerably more oversubscribed. Last year they received 1220 applicants for both PhD and Master's programs - and fill fewer places than Stanford (about 70 Master's students graduate per year).
Contacting Graduate Schools
In order to stress the point about over-subscription - it will be extremely difficult to get a reply from the admissions office for many of the top universities during application season. They will not pick up the phone or reply to emails. You will have more luck outside of September to April, but they're still likely to be very brusque. If you're applying for a professional program, you'll have a better chance of talking to someone - since these programs are more profitable for the university and therefore they provide better support for applicants. If you get rejected from a top university, don't expect any feedback - and don't expect them to provide much in the way of useful advice if you do manage to talk to someone. Your best bet is one of the many graduate forums (see the resources section at the end of this post).
Decisions
When it comes to decisions, universities send out their decisions at a similar date yearly. You should be aware that often universities will send out all of their acceptances first and often wait for up to six weeks before sending out rejections. This gives them the flexibility to offer any quickly rejected offers to other applicants - although this is rare, since most applicants will sit on offers until they all come in. If you see a rash of acceptances on one of the decisions trackers online and you haven't heard anything within a day or two - assume you've been rejected, it's better for your sanity. Some universities (such as UT Austin) are particularly evil - and don't send out rejections at all.
Area of Concentration
Finally, it's worth saying that you should consider what area you want to study carefully. I want to study artificial intelligence and I've always wanted to study this. There were a couple of courses taught at Cambridge but I didn't get to immerse myself in the way that I hoped and time constraints made it very difficult to devote enough attention to them. That said, my employment experience and extra-curriculars are unrelated to the field. This loops back to what I said earlier - in order to gain admission for a course to learn about AI (or any other specialization) - they want to see experience in AI. This matters less so for general computer science courses but if you're applying to say CMU's Robotics Institute (as I did) - you haven't got a chance without relevant experience.
Additionally, some areas are vastly more popular than others. I'd assume that admissions committees want to balance their classes as much as possible, so if you apply for AI/Machine Learning/Robotics or some similarly oversubscribed area - BE WARY! Competition within that area will be tougher (on an absolute numbers basis). Bear in mind that you can always choose courses from a different specialisation to the one you apply for.
Conclusion
To conclude - I apologise if I sound overly cynical - I just want to be realistic about your chances (and mine!). With the economy pushing graduates onto higher education across all subjects and the considerable salary differential (or, the perception of one) between technology jobs in the United States and elsewhere, there are more applicants than ever before. It's even harder if you're an international applicant as most of us are. There's some great advice on the internet but much of it was written a few years ago, and as any good technologist knows, things change so very quickly.
Good luck with your application, I wish you all the best. If you have any questions or feedback, please message me on The Grad Cafe. I can't promise to reply but I will try.
I've also written about the economics of getting a Master's degree here, as well as about adequate preparation for incoming robotics Master's students. Finally, another post about employability with a Master of Engineering degree.
A Note on Copyright
This post is published under the Creative Commmons BY-NC-SA license. Please feel free to share it along with with a link back to this page.
Resources
GRE Preparation
- Nova's GRE Math Prep Course - Full of harder and more comprehensive examples than the official GRE book.
- Essential Words for the GRE - A short book that was very helpful when learning vocabulary.
- GRE The Official Guide to the Revised General Test - The official ETS GRE book. A must have.
- Painless GRE - An Android application that was extremely helpful to brush on vocabulary while commuting to work.
On Letters of Recommendation
- Advice from UW's Michael Ernst
- Advice from Brown's Shriram Krishnamurthi
- A Sample Letter
- Some Advice on About.com
Books
- Graduate Admissions Essays, Fourth Edition - Donald Asher - An extremely well written collection of essays along with analysis.
Forums
- Edulix - Edulix is an Indian graduate programs forum. It has a trove of data through their 'uniSearch' on who's been admitted where. The uniSearch is incredibly clunky but is a valuable resource to see how competitive you might need to be.
- The Grad Cafe - My favourite grad applicants forum. They have a great results tracker and users are very helpful.
Internet
- Graduate Study in the Computer and Mathematical Sciences - A Survival Manual - useful advice on all aspects of graduate life.
- Mike Gleicher's Graduate School FAQ
- HOWTO: Get into grad school for science, engineering, math and computer science
- Advice for researchers and students
- Why Go to Graduate School and How to Get into the Program of your Dreams
- Applying to Graduate School in Computer Science (A U.S. Perspective)
- Jason I. Hong's collection of hyperlinks
- GradDecision - supposedly authored by Stanford's Andrew Ng
- Getting into CS Graduate School in the USA
- Demystifying the American Graduate Admissions Process - a paper written by Karthik Ragunathan, a Master's student from Stanford who was part of their MS admissions committee. Perhaps the most useful single document you will read.
- Ktik's Two Cents - a blog of admissions advice by Karthik
A Collection of Rejection Letters
On Google+ here.
anon wrote at 6:20 pm on Fri 5th Apr -
"if you're unable to do well on the GRE after a significant amount of parctice, then perhaps graduate school isn't for you."
If you're unable to spell properly, then perhaps graduate school isn't for you.
If you're unable to spell properly, then perhaps graduate school isn't for you.
hm wrote at 10:28 pm on Fri 5th Apr -
I would disagree with the statement that "almost everyone who gets an offer takes it." I would assume about 50% (the yield for the PhD program) actually take the offer, with the other 50% going to various programs at MIT, CMU, UCBerkeley, or WashU.
Otherwise, thanks for taking the time to write this all up!
Otherwise, thanks for taking the time to write this all up!
SS wrote at 8:36 pm on Sun 28th Apr -
@anon - thank you for finding that :-).
@hm - that's a fair point. I was considering mainly the Master's program - although I guess with PhD applications funding also comes into consideration - as well as fit. Since Master's students are rarely funded and we have less direct contact with professors, perhaps people are more swayed by the reputation of a department such as Stanford's. Thank you for reading!
@hm - that's a fair point. I was considering mainly the Master's program - although I guess with PhD applications funding also comes into consideration - as well as fit. Since Master's students are rarely funded and we have less direct contact with professors, perhaps people are more swayed by the reputation of a department such as Stanford's. Thank you for reading!
jr wrote at 5:10 am on Fri 9th Aug -
@ano it must have been a typo
@sunil very nice article
@sunil very nice article
jkim wrote at 4:03 am on Wed 14th Aug -
thanks for sharing such valuable information and your experience. I am trying out my luck this year for Stanford this year, and tho i don't know what your current status is, i just wanted to say good luck to you as well!
Dammy wrote at 5:45 pm on Wed 25th Sep -
Helpful, Thanks, got a GPA of 3.49/4 from a non us school. Think i stand a chance?
JoshO wrote at 2:44 am on Sat 2nd Nov -
Thank you, this was very informative. Best of luck with your own application
curious wrote at 2:46 am on Fri 13th Jun -
So did you get admitted or not? Have you been in Stanford's MSCS for almost a year now? Let us know
Anonymous wrote at 2:46 am on Sun 13th Jul -
Did you get accepted? Curious for an update.
dan wrote at 11:32 pm on Thu 20th Nov -
I got 164/170/4.5 on the Verbal/Quant/Writing of the GRE. The V/Q are well above 93/98 percentile, but 4.5 is 80 (while a 5, the next score up, is 93). Do you think they give more weight to the first two scores?
Also, I just graduated and started a job in the Bay Area that will pay for my MS, so I'm seriously considering the HCP. Would your recommendation be to take some NDO classes and kick butt and then apply next year? My undergrad GPA is 3.8 in Computer Engineering.
Thanks!
Also, I just graduated and started a job in the Bay Area that will pay for my MS, so I'm seriously considering the HCP. Would your recommendation be to take some NDO classes and kick butt and then apply next year? My undergrad GPA is 3.8 in Computer Engineering.
Thanks!
Nee wrote at 4:19 pm on Mon 4th May -
I did my uundergrad in India, and I was wondering what you meant by 'minimum required GPA'.
Sid wrote at 11:01 pm on Sun 30th Aug -
Great Info Sir I really appreciate the insight as there's not a lot of postive stuff out there. One question I have for you, would you say an individual who has a good foundation should shoot for graduating with Cum Laude Honors respectively? I know it fluctuates depending on what university a person goes to some lower tier are 3.5 but over all from the more well known colleges it generally 3.75 or even 3.85 at some places. Would you recommend to shoot for cum laude and magna cum laude (for the university's where that equals 3.75)? Thank You
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I'm a little bit terrified of the world at the moment but, at the same, quietly optimistic.
The last eighteen months have been tough, I've been in and out of hospital, personal relationships came to an unfortunate (but, I suppose, inevitable) end and my career plan was derailed (temporarily). The hopelessly ambitious robot who runs my mind decided to take a brief holiday but as my life slowly sorts itself out, has returned to coerce the rest of me into moving forward.
One thing I've really missed, and this seems to happen whenever I'm back in London for any extended period of time - is cycling. Real cycling. A loose definition of real cycling might involve what we did each weekend in Cambridge - pounding the mild inclines and declines of Thetford Forest weekend after weekend in the quest to gain a mild advantage at the next Sports series race. A tighter definition might be something like the Tour D'Afrique. There's nothing quite like cycling over buttery smooth roads in the Sudanese desert, or soaring (metaphorically of course) towards the Tanzanian border over 'rolling' hills.
When I'm sitting in front of two screens with dry eyes, struggling to stave off the boredom of fixing another damned bug created by someone else, I think of these days. Even more at times like this when Doctor's orders are to stay away from my bike and just three years ago I was ploughing on through a corrugated and sandy Sudanese national park.
The fact that I probably couldn't do what I did three years ago now is what scares me. I've just turned 25 - and walking on the ice with my arm in a sling a few weeks ago was a nervewracking experience (and damned painful when I did eventually slip).
Perhaps I'm just getting old and boring.
Still, my knee's better now (I can run without searing pain!) and my shoulder feels better than it has since 2004. I was often scared of mountain biking after past hiatuses - so this should be no different. After watching Premium Rush this evening, I can't wait to get back on my bike. Graduate school applications should hopefully do well - my usual habit of meticulously overanalysing the process is helping - and I'll be starting a new, albeit very different, adventure in six months time.
So bring on May, sunshine and that joyous feeling of rolling freedom.
The last eighteen months have been tough, I've been in and out of hospital, personal relationships came to an unfortunate (but, I suppose, inevitable) end and my career plan was derailed (temporarily). The hopelessly ambitious robot who runs my mind decided to take a brief holiday but as my life slowly sorts itself out, has returned to coerce the rest of me into moving forward.
One thing I've really missed, and this seems to happen whenever I'm back in London for any extended period of time - is cycling. Real cycling. A loose definition of real cycling might involve what we did each weekend in Cambridge - pounding the mild inclines and declines of Thetford Forest weekend after weekend in the quest to gain a mild advantage at the next Sports series race. A tighter definition might be something like the Tour D'Afrique. There's nothing quite like cycling over buttery smooth roads in the Sudanese desert, or soaring (metaphorically of course) towards the Tanzanian border over 'rolling' hills.
When I'm sitting in front of two screens with dry eyes, struggling to stave off the boredom of fixing another damned bug created by someone else, I think of these days. Even more at times like this when Doctor's orders are to stay away from my bike and just three years ago I was ploughing on through a corrugated and sandy Sudanese national park.
The fact that I probably couldn't do what I did three years ago now is what scares me. I've just turned 25 - and walking on the ice with my arm in a sling a few weeks ago was a nervewracking experience (and damned painful when I did eventually slip).
Perhaps I'm just getting old and boring.
Still, my knee's better now (I can run without searing pain!) and my shoulder feels better than it has since 2004. I was often scared of mountain biking after past hiatuses - so this should be no different. After watching Premium Rush this evening, I can't wait to get back on my bike. Graduate school applications should hopefully do well - my usual habit of meticulously overanalysing the process is helping - and I'll be starting a new, albeit very different, adventure in six months time.
So bring on May, sunshine and that joyous feeling of rolling freedom.
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I had to duck out of the way when the barriers started closing.
(View in high res)
(View in high res)
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Over the last two years, I've developed a strong liking for matcha after first discovering it at the Canary Wharf branch of EAT. (In 2011 I set myself the goal of trying every variation of every warm drink in popular London coffee shops.)
Matcha, if you've not heard of it before, is a finely ground green powder made from green tea leaves. In Japan it is something of a delicacy and is normally served as part of an elaborate tea ceremony. In the west, it is commonly mixed with warm milk to produce a 'matcha latte'. It is relatively expensive because production of matcha is very slow, about 30 grams per hour according to Wikipedia.
Matcha varies in quality - the most expensive and highest grades have a much more intense flavour than cheaper variants. I've been experimenting with different sources of matcha, including from eBay (not good), from a variety of shops in San Francisco (very good) and from a variety of shops in London's Chinatown. The best I've found is from the Japan Centre in London.
It can be made into a variety of drinks, I normally either mix it into a protein shake or with milk (and a spoonful of Milo to sweeten slightly). It also makes a great baking ingredient and to date I've made a matcha trifle (rather like tiramisu), matcha, pistachio and white chocolate brownies and matcha rusks.
Fuck Yeah, Matcha! is a particularly favourite Tumblr of mine - they showcase beautiful photos of matcha based food and drink.
Matcha is also great for sufferers of thyroid disease like myself because it has a much lower fluoride content than tea and coffee. It also has a much longer half life - similar to green tea, so there are no unpleasant headaches in store. My favourite description of matcha's effects comes from Breakaway Matcha:
"The caffeine hit of an espresso can be a bit like having an express train screaming through the middle of your body: a deep, powerful, jittery roar. I find the effects of matcha to be just as stimulating but in a more delicate, refined way, as if a thousand butterflies have descended on my body, beating their wings until I'm lifted, gently but resolutely, a few inches off the ground. (Seriously.)"
My latest project has been to try and catalogue all the places that serve matcha in London. The map below is publicly editable - click here to add to it.
View Matcha! in a larger map
Matcha, if you've not heard of it before, is a finely ground green powder made from green tea leaves. In Japan it is something of a delicacy and is normally served as part of an elaborate tea ceremony. In the west, it is commonly mixed with warm milk to produce a 'matcha latte'. It is relatively expensive because production of matcha is very slow, about 30 grams per hour according to Wikipedia.
Matcha varies in quality - the most expensive and highest grades have a much more intense flavour than cheaper variants. I've been experimenting with different sources of matcha, including from eBay (not good), from a variety of shops in San Francisco (very good) and from a variety of shops in London's Chinatown. The best I've found is from the Japan Centre in London.
It can be made into a variety of drinks, I normally either mix it into a protein shake or with milk (and a spoonful of Milo to sweeten slightly). It also makes a great baking ingredient and to date I've made a matcha trifle (rather like tiramisu), matcha, pistachio and white chocolate brownies and matcha rusks.
Fuck Yeah, Matcha! is a particularly favourite Tumblr of mine - they showcase beautiful photos of matcha based food and drink.
Matcha is also great for sufferers of thyroid disease like myself because it has a much lower fluoride content than tea and coffee. It also has a much longer half life - similar to green tea, so there are no unpleasant headaches in store. My favourite description of matcha's effects comes from Breakaway Matcha:
"The caffeine hit of an espresso can be a bit like having an express train screaming through the middle of your body: a deep, powerful, jittery roar. I find the effects of matcha to be just as stimulating but in a more delicate, refined way, as if a thousand butterflies have descended on my body, beating their wings until I'm lifted, gently but resolutely, a few inches off the ground. (Seriously.)"
My latest project has been to try and catalogue all the places that serve matcha in London. The map below is publicly editable - click here to add to it.
View Matcha! in a larger map
Matcha Expert wrote at 7:52 am on Wed 13th Mar -
Thanks for the blog. Amazon also has some great offers on Matcha. One of the best is DOCTOR KING
Finest Ceremonial ORGANIC Japanese Matcha Green Tea (Premium, Top Grade (Grade A), FIRST Harvest
Matcha Superpowered Green Tea). It is only £17.99 for 30g! Currently postage is free! I love this
product. You might want to visit Amazon and check it out.
Finest Ceremonial ORGANIC Japanese Matcha Green Tea (Premium, Top Grade (Grade A), FIRST Harvest
Matcha Superpowered Green Tea). It is only £17.99 for 30g! Currently postage is free! I love this
product. You might want to visit Amazon and check it out.
14:01
After several hours of procrastination, I'm starting out on an adventure, feeling a little tired, very fat and generally not my best. I'm writing a prototype mobile app to gather clinical survey data for a study my uncle will soon be running throughout hospitals in Edinburgh. The first port of call was Trigger.io's Forge tool, which compiles and packages HTML and Javascript to both Android and iOS mobile devices. This doesn't look like it'll be suitable for my needs, so I've registered as an Apple developer. The learning curve looks steep and so far it's taken nearly an hour (and still going) for Xcode to install on my tiny MacBook Air. The mini DisplayPort adaptor that is meant to connect my laptop to my monitor doesn't work, so I've ordered a new one in anticipation of the long hours that I don't want to be spending peering at an 11" screen.
This is an Easter Bank Holiday adventure. Time for some more matcha.
14:28
Xcode installed successfully! I'm running through the beginner's 'Hello World' tutorial. Xcode looks pretty slick but I'm a little terrified at the sight of Objective-C - having mainly programmed in C# and Java since my second year of university...
22:05
Was massively side tracked while going through the 'Hello World' tutorial and ended up catching up on the last but one copy of Wired. Then I went to the gym, came back, ate dinner ad played with my baby cousin for a few hours and watched an episode of Futarama. There's always tomorrow...
After several hours of procrastination, I'm starting out on an adventure, feeling a little tired, very fat and generally not my best. I'm writing a prototype mobile app to gather clinical survey data for a study my uncle will soon be running throughout hospitals in Edinburgh. The first port of call was Trigger.io's Forge tool, which compiles and packages HTML and Javascript to both Android and iOS mobile devices. This doesn't look like it'll be suitable for my needs, so I've registered as an Apple developer. The learning curve looks steep and so far it's taken nearly an hour (and still going) for Xcode to install on my tiny MacBook Air. The mini DisplayPort adaptor that is meant to connect my laptop to my monitor doesn't work, so I've ordered a new one in anticipation of the long hours that I don't want to be spending peering at an 11" screen.
This is an Easter Bank Holiday adventure. Time for some more matcha.
14:28
Xcode installed successfully! I'm running through the beginner's 'Hello World' tutorial. Xcode looks pretty slick but I'm a little terrified at the sight of Objective-C - having mainly programmed in C# and Java since my second year of university...
22:05
Was massively side tracked while going through the 'Hello World' tutorial and ended up catching up on the last but one copy of Wired. Then I went to the gym, came back, ate dinner ad played with my baby cousin for a few hours and watched an episode of Futarama. There's always tomorrow...
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(During the trip, I decided to take a quick survey of all the riders, just after we had left Arusha in Tanzania. This has been sitting on my hard drive since then! It's time to finally use it - this will be a first in a series of posts about the results. 52 riders participated in this survey, out of 69 total riders, a subscription rate of about 75%. I've not discounted sectional riders but there were relatively few of these.)
When starting the Tour D'Afrique, it quickly became clear that I was one of the youngest riders on the trip. The two main logistical barriers to the trip seem to be getting time off from work and financing it. Most young people have plenty of time, either before or after studying and don't have other constraints which tie them to home - such as a family or mortgage. Having enough money to do the trip is pretty difficult though and I worked hard for four summers and had to borrow some money from my parents in order to fund the trip! (Incidentally, the third barrier to joining the TDA is your fitness! Arguably though, this is something that can be fixed with a little dedication and perseverance.)
A few weeks ago, I was catching up with a friend over a drink and he had a dozen questions about the trip and more specifically EFI. This Wikipedia entry details EFI fairly well but I was curious to find out what the breakdown of EFIers was, by age. Brian at Tour D'Afrique very helpfully extracted this data for me and I've combined it with the data from our trip below.
The very first question we asked people was what their age was. I've plotted a histogram of the 52 riders ages on the graph below, bucketed in 5 yearly intervals. The average age of riders on our trip was 35.2 years, of which 28% had a birthday on the trip. (Theoretically this should be 32.9% but it's close enough.)
You'll notice the following-
Using the data that Brian gave, I've plotted a histogram of the 100 EFIers ages on the graph below, again bucketed in 5 yearly intervals.
This is a little different to the 2010 age distribution-
Out of interest, I've plotted the age distribution of EFIers against riders on our tour on the graph below. You should not that this is not statistically sound because the EFI data is taken from ten tours versus just one for the age distribution!
What is interesting is that-
In addition to the aggregate data above, I also have a gender breakdown of both riders from the 2010 trip and of EFIers.
Women appear to be generally underrepresented in both our tour and as a proportion of EFIers as a whole. However, the proportion of EFIers who are women is much less than the proportion of riders on our tour. There's a roughly similar age distribution for EFIers - whether man or woman.
When starting the Tour D'Afrique, it quickly became clear that I was one of the youngest riders on the trip. The two main logistical barriers to the trip seem to be getting time off from work and financing it. Most young people have plenty of time, either before or after studying and don't have other constraints which tie them to home - such as a family or mortgage. Having enough money to do the trip is pretty difficult though and I worked hard for four summers and had to borrow some money from my parents in order to fund the trip! (Incidentally, the third barrier to joining the TDA is your fitness! Arguably though, this is something that can be fixed with a little dedication and perseverance.)
A few weeks ago, I was catching up with a friend over a drink and he had a dozen questions about the trip and more specifically EFI. This Wikipedia entry details EFI fairly well but I was curious to find out what the breakdown of EFIers was, by age. Brian at Tour D'Afrique very helpfully extracted this data for me and I've combined it with the data from our trip below.
The very first question we asked people was what their age was. I've plotted a histogram of the 52 riders ages on the graph below, bucketed in 5 yearly intervals. The average age of riders on our trip was 35.2 years, of which 28% had a birthday on the trip. (Theoretically this should be 32.9% but it's close enough.)
You'll notice the following-
- The bulk of riders are aged between 25 and 45.
- There are a reasonable number of younger riders but far fewer older riders - this is probably indicative of the fitness level required to do the trip.
Using the data that Brian gave, I've plotted a histogram of the 100 EFIers ages on the graph below, again bucketed in 5 yearly intervals.
This is a little different to the 2010 age distribution-
- There is a similar peak between 25 and 45, although here it appears to extend to 50. 40-44 is a little bit of an anomaly. I think this is due to fitness.
- There are no EFIers younger than 22.
Out of interest, I've plotted the age distribution of EFIers against riders on our tour on the graph below. You should not that this is not statistically sound because the EFI data is taken from ten tours versus just one for the age distribution!
What is interesting is that-
- There are proportionally more older EFIers than riders on the 2010 tour.
- Whereas the peak bucket for riders is to be aged between 25-29, the highest proportion of EFIers are aged 35-39.
In addition to the aggregate data above, I also have a gender breakdown of both riders from the 2010 trip and of EFIers.
Women appear to be generally underrepresented in both our tour and as a proportion of EFIers as a whole. However, the proportion of EFIers who are women is much less than the proportion of riders on our tour. There's a roughly similar age distribution for EFIers - whether man or woman.
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Sam wrote at 7:50 pm on Sat 18th Feb -
That's a matter of opinion.
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