Benjamn’s Musngs: Ben Newman: November 2008 Archives

Low way, high way

By

Ben Newman

on November 30, 2008 8:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Here’s an elevation profile of the first thirty miles of my Thanksgiving ride:

And here’s a profile of the Skyline to 9 route that I could have taken:

Note the scale (the first seven miles, for example, are the same). As you can see, I took the road less steep, and it made a difference.

I used the HeyWhatsThat Path Profiler to generate these profiles.

Edit: equalized the horizontal scales and made the first seven miles actually identical.

The way I went

By

Ben Newman

on November 30, 2008 10:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Spent the afternoon of Thanksgiving Day biking from my house in Menlo Park to my housemate Bernie’s parents’ place in Santa Cruz. Some say hunger is the best pickle, and I will not deny that it enhances a meal, but you haven’t really given thanks, I would argue, until you’ve tried hunger in conjunction with exhaustion, mild dehydration, and wind chill. All four were part of my plan, and the plan was a resounding success.

Continue reading The way I went.

On the Discontinuation of Polaroid Instant Film

By

Ben Newman

on November 26, 2008 12:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Fell asleep in the planetarium
today. Fell asleep in the
aquarium today. Fell asleep
in the formicarium.

Can’t hardly go to the
mailbox, or put out the
trash, or bring in the
paper but a meteor comes
careening from the meteor-
illuminated sky, distant,
with the speed of a
bowling ball drifting to the
bottom of a swimming
pool.

You look like you could
use a reading to, and I
have just the book to read
to you. A reading to and a
few turns taken talking past
each other in the wasted
hours before the meteor-
perforated dawn, and a
sleeping with, and a living
through—

Get ready for the jubilee,
    Hurrah! Hurrah!
We’ll give the hero three times three,
    Hurrah! Hurrah!
The ants go marching nine by nine;
    The little one stops to check the time

It’s early, maybe five
in the morning, meteors
are falling, and you
want to know if there’s film left
in my Polaroid camera.