Mantor Monday

So....here I am, just sitting around the old Facebook Page, waiting for people to come along and help us rack up some miles on our Virtual Appalachian Trail. You know about our trail, don't you? No? Let me fill you in: we're reading a book about the Appalachian Trail for On Our Minds this year. We thought it would be fun if we all, as a campus and as a Facebook community, logged all the miles we walk every day, and see if we could get anywhere close to the 2181 miles of the actual Maine to Georgia trail.

So far?

We've barely crept across campus.

Maybe part of the problem is, you just don't know how far you walk every day. I can help with that, and it won't even involve buying a pricey pedometer. I'm going to teach you how use the Google Distance Measuring Tool, for FREE.

Go to Google Maps. Click the little gear image up in the upper right corner. Choose map labs. Then enable the Distance Measurement Tool. (Don't forget to click the "save changes" button.)

Next, do a Google Maps search for the area you'll be walking in. There will be a little blue ruler icon in the very bottom left corner of the map. Click on it, then double click on the starting point of your walk. Drag your "path" along the map, double clicking wherever you need to change directions.

That's it, that's all there is to it. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. Oh, and then you take that distance measurement right on over to Facebook, and tell us how far you walked. And we will say "Yay, you." I promise.