Dragonslayer

Posted on April 25, 2015 by Stephen
Dragonslayer – the handiwork of Strava artist Stephen Lund • Victoria BC Garmin GPS Strava art dragon dragonslayer

The broad strokes of this StravaArt scene – created with 125 km worth of pedalling around Victoria – were clearly visible within the map after I highlighted the city’s main roads

Okay – so maybe there’s slight historical disconnect between a guy decked out in gladiator garb (a fashion throwback to the last couple centuries BC) and a dragon, whose ilk didn’t start laying waste to European villages until a few centuries later. (Saint George of Lydda – immortalized in the myth of Saint George and the Dragon – was prancing around Asia Minor in the gear of a Roman soldier toward the end of the third century AD.)

Well, don’t blame the artist for any unfortunate anachronisms. Blame the folks who planned Victoria’s streets.

Like many of my Strava art pictures – including my Strava giraffe (see The Art of Giraffe Spotting) – the general shape for this one simply emerged from the map after I highlighted the city’s main streets. (See lower image at right). All I had to do was flesh out the details.

As an aside: St. George’s Day – an important Christian celebration in many countries – was just two days ago (April 23 – the day of his death in 303 AD.)

See it on Strava

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One for the birthday girl

Posted on April 24, 2015 by Stephen
Happy birthday message and Strava art gift • Strava art and bike-writing by Stephen Lund on the streets of Victoria BC garmin gps cycling cyclist bicycle

I had to pedal 49 kilometres – 19 with my Garmin on, another 30 with my Garmin off – to wrap up this Strava art gift and birthday message for my lovely wife

It was my wife’s birthday on Monday. And much to her delight, she got the very thing every wife of a Strava doodler hopes to get for her birthday: a Strava doodle designed and pedalled just for her!

While the city grid was more or less cooperative for creating the vertical lines of the gift box and ribbons, the box’s diagonal edges required much pedalling here and there and back and forth to “connect the dots” – a technique I describe in my previous post. (The second ride pictured here – recorded on my iPhone Strava app – shows all that back and forth.)

All told, this Strava gift and happy birthday message called for 49 kilometres of cycling in Victoria’s downtown core and the neighbourhoods of Central Park, Fernwood and Jubilee .

See it on Strava

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The miles on the other side of the artwork

Posted on April 18, 2015 by Stephen
Enormous Tyrannosaurus rex behind the scenes mileage – the handiwork of Strava artist Stephen Lund • Victoria BC Garmin GPS Strava art T. rex dinosaurs Tyrannosaurus rex Strava art GPS art how-to tips and tricks

To create 40 kilometres of prehistoric Strava art, Strava doodler Stephen Lund actually had to cycle nearly 100 km. Pictured here is an iPhone Strava app recording of all the mileage that isn’t “captured” in the other image.

Some of my Strava art pieces are one continuous line from beginning to end. Others – like the T. rex I doodled this morning – require varying degrees of what I call “connecting the dots.”

Where the roads don’t go where my artistic ambitions need them to go, or when I’m determined to achieve a level of detail that simply isn’t possible on the city grid, I exploit the fact that when I stop my Garmin’s timer at point A and turn it back on at point B, I end up with a straight line connecting the two points.

It’s a handy trick, but it’s also time consuming. The ride is fitful with stopping and diligent map double-checking to make sure I’m hitting STOP and START at precisely the right spots.

And then there’s the added mileage. The recorded distance for my finished T. rex picture is 39.4 kilometres. But as you can see by the data on this image, I pedalled an additional 56.2 km connecting the dots for a grand total of nearly 100 km.

To create this “behind the scenes” picture, I simply cycled with two devices – my Garmin and my iPhone. Whenever I pressed STOP on my Garmin I pressed START on my iPhone Strava app and vice versa.

See it on Strava

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Enormous T. rex has enormous hissy-fit at Oak Bay Marina

Posted on April 18, 2015 by Stephen
Enormous Tyrannosaurus rex – the handiwork of Strava artist Stephen Lund • Victoria BC Garmin GPS Strava art T. rex dinosaurs Tyrannosaurus rex Oak Bay Marina

Good grief. Could someone please toss this pathetic creature a handful of herring?

Discriminatory food service was the apparent cause of a thunderous ruckus near the Oak Bay Marina on Saturday morning, when an enormous Tyrannosaurus rex threw an enormous temper-tantrum – all because of three plump seals and some frozen fish from the Marina gift shop .

Witnesses report that tourists had been feeding frozen herring to the spoiled harbour seals that bob like lazy fishing floats near Oak Bay Marina while T. rex stood by, begging pathetically with his useless forelimbs outstretched. But nobody flung any fish-bits his way, so Mr. T started roaring and hissing and kicking up an almighty fuss.

“King of the tyrant lizards” my butt. More like king of the panty-waisted crybabies.

NOTE: The T. rex in pictured here has had a little dental work. Due to a GPS and/or Garmin glitch, my ride as it appears on Strava is missing a number of teeth. I put them back in with Photoshop. What you see here is the route as planned and as ridden. Needless to say, Mr. T wasn’t the only creature in Oak Bay having a hissy fit today.

See it on Strava

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Anglerfish blamed for Monday a.m. absences at YYJ high school

Posted on April 13, 2015 by Stephen
Strava art anglerfish near Oak Bay High School in Victoria BC • Strava art by Strava artist Stephen Lund • Victoria BC Garmin GPS Strava art animals fish anglerfish Lophiiformes esca illicium

Oak Bay High students are being warned: “Stay away from the light! That dangly thing…it’s a trick, not a bag of Doritos.”

To explain a spike in unexcused absences among its student population this morning, administrators at Victoria’s Oak Bay High School are pointing fingers at a giant Strava art anglerfish seen lurking near the school grounds.

“It’s that fleshy growth at the end of its illicium,” says the school’s biology teacher. “Students are drawn to its luminescent glow like moths to a porch light. You’d think those enormous, terrifying teeth would be a clue that something’s amiss, but you know teenagers and their tendency to traipse obliviously into the gaping maw of peril.”

In their investigation of the truancy issue, Oak Bay Police have sought assistance from VicPD, whose police station, conveniently, is right in the belly of the beast.

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Foraging stegosaurus tramples Victoria neighbourhood

Posted on April 11, 2015 by Stephen
Stegosaurus tramples Fernwood neighbourhood in Victoria BC • Strava art by Strava artist Stephen Lund • Victoria BC Garmin GPS Strava art dinosaurs Stegosaurus

Residents of Fernwood got a rude awakening early Saturday as a foraging stegosaurus rambled through the neighbourhood

Just two days after a huge Tyrannosaurus rex terrorized Victoria’s Beacon Hill Park, a massive stegosaurus wandered into the city and made an almighty mess of the Fernwood neighbourhood while foraging for leafy greens.

Bearded hipsters dove for cover and scrambled to upload Instagram photos as the dinosaur’s foot came down on their prized hangout, the Cornerstone Café. Meanwhile, wide-eyed vegans in wool skull caps and thrift store togs poured from homes to check on their tomato cages and window-box herb gardens.

As the wayward stegosaurus made its way toward Government Street, onlookers noted that it had a vacant look and a dopey grin. I’m guessing someone in Fernwood will be rather dismayed to find his container garden of “medicinal marijuana” chomped to the roots.

See it on Strava

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T. rex terrorizes Beacon Hill Park

Posted on April 9, 2015 by Stephen
This huge Tyrannosaurus rex – nearly seven kilometres from nose to tail – is the handiwork of Strava artist Stephen Lund • Victoria BC Garmin GPS Strava art T. rex dinosaurs Tyrannosaurau rex

This huge Tyrannosaurus rex – nearly seven kilometres from nose to tail – is the handiwork of Strava artist Stephen Lund

They say Tyrannosaurus rex – “king of the tyrant lizards” – roamed throughout what is now western North America from around 67 million to 65 million years ago, when the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event wiped out the land-dwelling dinosaurs.

Well, “they” are wrong, because a T. rex was spotted this morning in Victoria, BC, scaring the bejesus out of the people and the peacocks puttering about in Beacon Hill Park.

One of the largest carnivorous dinosaurs ever to live, the T. rex of old measured up to 40 feet (12.3 m) long.

Pfft. That’s nothing. Victoria’s T. rex is just shy of seven kilometres from nose to tail!

See it on Strava

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Kangaroo with a flair for irony

Posted on April 5, 2015 by Stephen
Kangaroo for my followers in Australia • Strava art by Stephen Lund Victoria BC Garmin GPS Strava art cycling cyclist marsupial kangaroo

As requested by one of my followers in Australia…a Strava kangaroo!

If you’ve seen my doodles on Strava.com, you’ll know that many appear upside down – my Strava giraffe, mermaid, armadillo and sea serpent, for example. (Here on my blog, I’ve flipped them over for ease of viewing.)

The reason is simple. As a Strava artist, I’m a slave to the roads and pathways that comprise my canvas. I don’t ‘create’ my Strava doodles – I discover them in the city map. Sometimes they’re right-side up; sometimes they’re upside down; sometimes they’re sideways.

Still, the upside-down-ness of many of my doodles has spawned comments and wisecracks about my tendency to cater to my followers Down Under. (“Still doing them for our Australian cousins, I see,” a fellow Strava artist recently remarked.)

It strikes me as ironic, then, that my first Strava-sketch of an Australian critter, which I purposefully designed and doodled for my friends in Australia, popped out of the map right-side up!

See it on Strava

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How does the Easter Bunny stay healthy?

Posted on April 4, 2015 by Stephen
Happy Easter 2015 Easter bunny Easter egg • Strava art by Stephen Lund Victoria BC Garmin GPS Strava art cycling cyclist bicycle

Victoria’s Stravadoodler wishes you a Happy Easter!

He gets oodles of ‘eggs-ercise’ as he hops to and fro delivering Easter treats.

So does Victoria’s Stravadoodler as he pedals to and fro doodling giant bunnies and Easter greetings.

It took 75+ kilometres of cycling to Strava-sketch this Easter message and the big Easter Bunny who’s holding an ‘egg-citing’ gift just for you.

Happy Easter!

See it on Strava

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Sea serpent sighted in Victoria waters

Posted on April 2, 2015 by Stephen
The Sea Serpent of Haro Strait – Strava art by Stephen Lund Victoria BC garmin gps strava art cycling bicycle cyclist

The Sea Serpent of Haro Strait • Strava art by Stephen Lund on the streets of Victoria, BC

The Okanagan Valley has Ogopogo. Québec’s Lake Memphremagog has Memphre. And Scotland has Nessie – the Monster of Loch Ness.

Not to be outdone, Crescent Lake (Newfoundland) has ‘Cressie’. Lake Tahoe (California) has ‘Tahoe Tessie’. Lake Erie (Ohio) has ‘South Bay Bessie’. Even Japan’s Lake Ikeda has ‘Issie’.

Isn’t it about time Victoria had a legendary sea serpent of our own?

Well, now we do. Rising up out of Haro Strait with a neck nearly 10 kilometres long, she was spotted today munching seaweed over Victoria’s downtown area.

What shall we call her? (‘Messie’ for her sloppy seaweed-munching? ‘YYJessie’? Something, perhaps, that doesn’t rhyme with Nessie?)

ERRATUM • Shortly after I published this post, a couple members of my cycling club pointed out that Victoria does have a mythical sea creature of its own. Its name is Cadborosaurus willsi, or ‘Caddy’.

A couple factoids about this sea serpent, which I doodled with 71.1 kilometres of cycling:

  • For the first time in Stravadoodles history, my route passed through Ross Bay Cemetery (for the front edge of the creature’s crest)
  • The sea serpent’s eyeball is the long curved driveway on the grounds of Government House (official residence of the Lieutenant Governor of British Columbia), where a friendly lady with a drooling dog offered to take my picture (posted below)

See it on Strava

Victoria's Stravadoodler pauses for a photo op at Victoria’s Government House • Strava artist Stephen Lund Victoria BC Garmin GPS Strava art cycling cyclist bicycle

Victoria’s Stravadoodler pauses for a photo op at Victoria’s Government House

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