Replipublican?
Wave Magazine's Eric Gutoski gives San Francisco mayoral candidates the Voight-Kampff Test.
Via Gizmodo.
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September 27, 2004
A Golden Fifty
I rode another fifty miles yesterday in the Golden Apple Tour. It was beautiful warm day for the ride, a moderately hilly and frequently beautiful route through parts of New York's Westchester County. Here's how it went:
-1.5 miles: Lots of cyclists on the road as I approach the registration area by car. Are they really riding up this hill at the start of the ride>.
1.5 miles: Not so bad, really. OK. I haven't been properly training in a month, maybe I'm just getting worried over nothing.
5 miles: Happily crossing a bridge over a lake and watching people fishing from a rowboat twenty or thirty feet below me it suddenly occurs to me that my only security is a light guardrail that comes up only to my knees. I adjust my course to put some distance between myself and said rail.
10 miles: We're on an absolutely lovely paved bike path through the woods. Tall trees arch together like a cathedral high overhead the long straight path. Pale yellow leaves fall across the path as I ride.
13 miles: Getting back on the path after the first rest stop I find a ride marshal attempting to bodily block the rider behind me from continuing on the course. "Sir, I have to ask you to put your helmet on. Sir, put your helmet on right now!"
"You want me to put my helmet on in the street?," the rider asks, while pedalling around his now flumoxxed antagonist. Picture this: a heavyset forty-something man with his helmet slung over a handlebar. The helmet is mandatory, and he would have had to be wearing it at registration and various other points along the ride, but he evidently removes it as soon as he's out of sight, only to carry it the entire way anyway. I am quite certain that it's significantly less fun to have a helmet dangling from one handlebar for 25 mile miles or more. Some people are just so blockheadedly stupid.
13-14 miles: I slowly pass perhaps ten small clumps of riders, families and friends riding together, exchanging pleasntries after calling out "on your left!" as I approach.
14.5 miles: Where'd everybody go? Having not seen another soul for half a mile I realize I was supposed to leave the path at the last crossing, and I double back.
15-16 miles: I slowly pass perhaps ten very familiar small clumps of riders, families and friends riding together, exchanging pleasntries after calling out "on your left!" as I approach. I hope this bent their brains a little.
25 miles: "He's got it! Yeah baby, he's got it!" I feel absolutely great as I pass the starting point to begin the second half of my figure-eight ride. There are only two other rest stops (at 12.5 and 34.3 miles, for some reason) and I consider taking a break at the registration area but I'm feeling so good I decide to just keep going. Not training for a month hasn't slowed me down at all!
30 miles: Not training for a month has bitten me in the butt. I'm crawling along, limping up slight hills, week in the knee, lactic acid burning in my thighs. I find myself singing "The Sloop John B." as I struggle along.
34.3 miles: I sack out in the grass at the last rest stop and eat half the snacks I brought with me. Usually I don't sit down but there's no question this time.
40 miles: Feeling just fine again. How'd my average speed slip down there? I wonder if I can fight it back up. I begin pushing hard, even up the hills.
45 miles: On a shoulderless road I've chosen to occupy the righthand lane. A car pulls up close behind me and leans on his horn. Greatly startled, I manage to spin around and glare at the vehicle, which it turns out is not even trying to pass me. The driver was turning right and I wasn't even in his way. Creep.
49 miles: I'm coming up on that hill from the beginning of the ride again, but from the other direction this time.
50.5 miles: This time it's hard. And I'm trying to hammer my way over it to keep my speed up.
52.06 miles: Done! I made it, with my average speed about 1mph higher than I've managed in the past.
The falling leaves on the bike trail was a transcendent moment. The whole bike trail leg was beautiful, really. One other highlight stands out for me. I didn't include it above because I can't remember when it happened:
Beginning a mild climb I'm passed by three fitter riders in close formation. I pick up the pace on the hill and fall in behind them in the following flat section, hoping to get some benefit from drafting them. These guys clearly know what they're doing riding solidly so close to one another. Me, I'm counting on my excellent brakes.
We ride into an oxbow of a road with housing subdivisions downhill on the outside and larger homes on the hill within. We hit a steep descent. I fall back from these guys a little bit but race along, pedalling steadily in top gear as we pass a few slightly slower riders. We occupy the entire unlined road, which I hope (but am not certain) is one way. At least we can see far ahead.
When we bottom out and reach the next climb I find the hardcore guys slowing down more than I am. I crank and manage to pass one of them on the climb. In the next steep descent they (inadvertantly) block me from trying to pass them, but I take them both on the second climb, pulling ahead for a while.
Later they all pass me again before turning off on one of the longer routes, but those hills, down and up, were glorious. I reached 40 miles per hour in perfect comfort and control on this smooth, empty road, and I outclimbed better riders. Not as sweet as the bike path, but it was quite a rush.
September 20, 2004
Penn Zen
At the edge of the concourse a sign reads:
SIT ON AIR |
Update: Picture added (below).
As requested and promised, here's a phonecam shot (click for full size version): 
Bird's Eye Atlas of New York
UK publisher Getmapping specializes in aerial photographs, maps, and ways of combining the two (there are lots of fascinating products in their online store, which is worth the Royal pain of exploring). A particularly intriguing series is their series of photographic atlases of British Cities. Well in two weeks they're coming out with their aerial atlas of New York City, and this book is definitely going on my wishlist!
Via Gizmodo.
Remembering Numbering
I forgot to post this interesting article on memorizing numbers (and other things). There are some fun anecdotes in here. The taste of a Mandelbrot sets the mind wand'ring ...
Via BoingBoing.
September 17, 2004
Engineering
I was looking for some clarifying information on two- and four-stroke engines over at Wikipedia the other day, which led me to Matt Keveney's great page of Animated Engines, which in turn led me to these diagrams from NASA's Beginner's Guide to Propulsion. Any questions?
September 16, 2004
In the Pool
I recently signed up for swimming classes. I learned to swim as a child and can get around OK but I never really developed good breathing or form and I'm not as strong as I'd like to be. Plus it's a great way to work out.
So Tuesday night I was in the pool at the Y with a group of similarly abled swimmers. One fellow is physically strong and a regular swimmer, but his legs kick at the surface, splashing water thirty feet into the air. As he reaches the side of the pool where I've paused he comments on the water he's inadvertently been swallowing: "man, this'll clean you right out. There's lots of chlorine in here."
"Lots of people, too," I say.
"I was trying not to think about that," he says.
Then with a wet "puh!" he spits into the splash gutter along the edge of the water, thereby exorcising some of his chlorine demons. I notice that he does this whenever he stops to rest. And this is what I'm thinking about later when I accidentally swallow a huge gulp of pool water.
September 15, 2004
Seatmates
The train ride was a slow one this morning, with an extra fifteen minutes of starting and stopping as we made our way through some large interchanges. I was sitting in one of the rows that's face to face with the next row. There was one man across from me, and across the aisle there was a woman and another man in his row. Facing them was another passenger, my seatmate across the aisle, a heavyset square-figured middle aged woman, who whiled away the journey playing a video game on her swivel phone. She took this thing out when we first stopped between stations and kept it up, no kidding, for at least twenty minutes. Twenty minutes of the same forty-five second Nintendo jingle. Over. And Over. And Over. The man across from me shifted uncomfortably in his seat. The fellow diagonally across from me meaningfully cleared his throat. Nothing. I contemplated offering to help her disable the sound on her game, but I knew if she had any sense at this point she never let one of her neighbors handle that phone. So with the violent weight shifts, back arches, and butt pivots that are the international signs for SHUT THAT DAMN THING OFF!, we sat and endured. Cowards.