When I'm not feverishly programming, I'm usually shooting pictures, sleeping, commuting on the train or by bike, or eating. Occasionally I'm building a crazy circuit to do something strange.
Of course, I program while I'm on the train (using a laptop with a wireless connection) and while I'm eating, so I guess the only real refuge is sleep. Or biking; it's hard to even think while biking hundreds of miles through barren countryside.
Before I started working for Penn, I had lots of free time (and did very little programming). I spent a good chunk of this riding a Schwinn 21-speed between Philadelphia and Valley Forge. It started out as a way to kill 6 hours (about 20 miles to my dad's house in Audubon, lounging at his house for a few hours, and then 20 miles back, with a stop for lunch and/or dinner somewhere inbetween). After a few years of doing this once a week, 40 miles in a day clearly wasn't a problem; I literally felt like I could bike any distance as long as I didn't stop and sit down.
Hence the beginning of my bike trips. In October of 1994, my friend Eric and I decided to take a bike trip to meet my best friend from High School (Greg) in Dingman's Ferry, where he worked. The trip would be about 140 miles each way, which seemed daunting. I found a book with a suggested bike route, figured out how to get into the middle of the route, bought a new Trek 850, packed up far too many clothes, a sleeping bag, and a 15-year-old pup tent, and we were off. We took a train from downtown Philadelphia to West Trenton, and biked from there.
Well, I found out rather quickly that my 80-ish pounds of stuff was a real energy waster, and that my cheap saddlebags were a nuisance. My "I can bike anywhere" additude started to fall away as we hit real mountains (which west-coast natives know as "hills"). Eric was also in a hurry, as he wanted to make the entire trip in 4 days; I wanted to take the whole week. At the end of the second day, we copied the directions for Eric so that he could blaze ahead of me. Eventually, we both made it; Eric took a bus back to Philly from East Stroudsburg, and I biked back (while learning that I really needed a topological map, and that a road going straight where I wanted it to would take much longer than the route that goes around the mountain).
So, not having learned my lesson the first time, I decided to do it again. In August of 1995, Sparks and I gave it a go. We made excellent time on the first half of the first day, but I injured my knee; we still made about 90 miles. Somehow, we managed to get to Dingman's Ferry on the second day. By this point I was in some serious pain, and my wife (then Fiancee) had to drive up and bring me back.
Determined not to let my knee get the better of me, I decided that a third trip was in order. In August of 1996, I tried again, this time with my friend Scott. In the middle of the first day, I thought that my knee was starting to feel strange, and decided we'd play it safe; we decided to bike to Easton instead (which is a modest 67 miles from our starting point), and then biked back. It must have been the weather, because my knee never really bothered me during the trip.
In June of 1997, Scott and I decided to go west instead of north.
In June of 1998, we decided south had to be better.
From 1999 onward, I combined computers and biking and started hauling various pieces of computer gear with me to track where I am, take pictures, and so on. See my bike trip pages for more about the technology/bike union. [This part of my website is fairly volatile, and may not always be available.]
The 2003 trip combined another hobby: amateur radio. I've always been interested in wireless communication, and all of my bike computer systems have incorporated some sort of cellular device. In 2003, the primary data relay mechanism was APRS, the Automatic Position Reporting System. It runs over amateur radio.
In 2004 I finally bought a Digital Rebel and got more serious about photography. Out of this came my Photoblog and then my photography business. And ultimately a Canon 5D, when I outgrew the Rebel.