It’s Pie season. Also, π season.
Before the easing in Confinement 2.0 (or reconfinement) restrictions, we were limited to how far we could travel from home if not going for shopping, work, or school. As it was in the spring, going for some air or exercise was to be within a 1 kilometer radius and 1 hour.* A number of quick mapping tools offered shortcuts to show your 1k distance.
Aerial view of the 1km radius trace around our Paris apartment.
My goal was to trace the circumference at each crossing of a public way. To stay within the 1h hour limit, I divided that circumference into 6 parts. Due to stops to check the map and take photos, I sometimes missed my 60 minute deadline although never more than by 10 minutes.
I did, on occasion, step just outside the bounds of the circle — when my next way point was only just around a corner. But as you will see on my tracking map below, created with the excellent Visorando app, I did backtrack when I considered going around the corner to be too far out-of-bounds.
My 1 km circumference during confinement. Apparent gaps in the circumference are breaks from one day to the next. Some days show no break because of the need to trace over the same route to start or end a walk.
If I could have walked the circumference alone, it would have taken just over 90 minutes. Getting to each start of the trace or from each stopping point is 15 minutes from home. In the end, the 6 walks totaled about 6 hours, not including time for photos.
I started by mapping the circumference crossings in Google maps (linked here) with 84 points. In some instances, these points are on 2 sides of a boulevard or an intersection. Narrow roads, where the circumference passed close to a 90° angle, were given only one point. Before each morning walk, I would use the directions tool in Google Maps to time my distance between my stop and start points.
Our limits have changed now to 3 hour outings and a 20km radius. I won’t be doing the same project this time. I did toy with the idea of tracing radii of the circumference — out and back with the help of the transit system — but the time commitment is just a bit too much.
At nearly every crossing point I took at least one photo. I also took a few along the way which did not fall on the circumference. Some of these made their way Instagram and Facebook. A collection of those images and more can be found at this link.†
Cheers,
Richard_
* Confinement 1.0 felt much more… confining. Part of this is due in part to schools being open during confinement 2.0. I invite you to read my story about our experience during the spring confinement. Let’s hope there is no version 3.0.
† Images were all shot on an iPhone, with light processing of JPEGs in Lightroom. The motion effects/blurs in many of the images were created with Spectre.
—November 2020