Ciro Santilli @cirosantilli  40

Ciro Santilli lived in Santos from about the year 1998 to 2007, with a 10 month hiatus in Coventry, UK, until he went to the University of São Paulo.

Santos is the nearest beach city to São Paulo City, and for this reason:

Ciro idolizes Santos as the perfect location to live nature-wise due to its amazing wide sandy beach, in which Ciro spent endless hours walking on the sand and on the largest beachfront garden in the world (archive), meditating, and playing some soccer after school was over. Santos is also the city where Pelé first played professionally.

Ciro has visited Santos several times after leaving Brazil. Doing this gives him a weird feeling of having a separate life, in which time passes 2 weeks every few years. Of course, as your family grows, it gets harder and harder to go back home, and your family members might want to just go travel to more interesting places than just stay at your wonderful beach which you love in part due to nostalgia.

Ciro is also fond of the concept of the small public buildings near the beach garden (postos de praia), which serve different cultural activities: library, comic book store, art cinema, surf school. It is such a shame that the library and comic book ones are in such bad shape as of 2020, old books and poor people who go there to sleep a bit in the barely working air conditioning. Ciro fantasizes how those could instead be cultural hubs for the gathering of the brightest artists, and scientists, of town. Maybe they are just too small. Maybe it is not within the realm of possibility of public service. Maybe, we should focus instead in the poorer regions, far form the beach. But the dream remains.

Santos only has one natural defect: mosquitoes. By the sea it is fine because the wind is strong, and they don't like salt water. But anywhere else, you will be eaten alive, and maybe get dengue, Ciro got it once. Gene drive, please.

This instagram page has several drone videos of the region: www.instagram.com/malta.drone

Capital of the Northern Song dynasty. Features in Water Margin.

On the coast between Los Angeles and San Francisco, closer to Los Angeles. Home of UCSB.

Great set of long distance routes.

They are very well chosen for their high safety and level interest, so you can just go into them without putting much thought into it.

Sometimes they go a bit too much on the side of safety, making certain transitions annoying, but in general the selection is spot on.

The routes do sometimes go on a bit of gravel, so they are most adequate for hybrid bikes rather than road bikes, although road bikes would be able to to much of them. A more road-bike dedicated possibility is the The National Byway.

Note however that there are many many other local routes which are not in the network, but arguably equally, or more worthwhile.

Their diginal map distribution mechanisms are a bit shitty and sometimes asks you to pay for certain formats, which is hard to understand given that the maintainer of those maps, the Ordnance Survey appears to be public... github.com/cirosantilli/cirosantilli.github.io/issues/61 "How to see the Sustrans National Cycle Network on Google maps?"

Googling "National Cycle Netowrk KML" leads to: data-sustrans-uk.opendata.arcgis.com/ from which we can download the KML. gis.stackexchange.com/questions/216770/how-to-open-kml-file-in-google-maps-for-android then shows how to make that viewable on Google Maps by going through www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/?hl=en on the browser. TODO 2021-11:"Ralph Hughes" www.linkedin.com/in/ralph-hughes-501474121 is listed as the creator/responsible of the exports, but can't find his email. Sent an email to gissupport@sustrans.org.uk and he did reply a few days later that they are aware of the issue, and are particularly trying to reach out to Google about it. Great news!
GPSPrune 20.2-1 can open the KML however, so that file can't be entirely wrong.

OpenStreetMaps has them on by default though if you just click "Cycle Map" layer. It is not as incredibly detailed as the Ordnance Survey one, e.g. does not show which side of the street to ride on, but still, is very good.

TODO interactive online app? Ahh, those charities that try to make money by individual transactions... when they die, nothing will be left of all their work.

Edit: noticed that it is on by default on OpenStreetMaps web UI under the "Cycle Map" layer marked at "NB".

Although Ciro Santilli lived in São Paulo City nominally during his studies, it would be more precise to say that he lived in University of São Paulo-land, because Ciro was cheap, didn't have a car, and did nothing but study, stay at home, go back to Santos to see his parents and the beach.

But the little he saw of the city made a deep impression on him.

The unreasonable size.

The unbearable contrasts.

Caetano's Sampa is the ultimate description of the city!