By the Numbers

8/22/2005 07:50:00 p.m.

I almost titled this one "8y 7h3 Numb3r5", but then I remembered how much I hate 1337speak.

So. I went for a bike ride tonight, a nice little jaunt that took me in a big circle (well, a square) (well, a polygon of some kind) from my place down to 34th street, then south and east to the mall, then north to Park Ave, west down to 22nd, and then a straight shot north back to my house.

Some Numbers
Number of minutes I was on my bike: 30.
Active heart rate at the end of my ride: 108bpm.
Number of small white dogs that I almost ran over: one.*
Number of big white vans that almost ran me over: one.**
Number of cars with loud "mufflers" that spat partially-unburned gasoline into the air at $1.039/litre***: two.
Amount of physical work that I did: a big fat zero.****

______________

* He was curious, and his owner had his leash payed out a little too far, and she (his owner) didn't see me coming. I managed to slide under some willow branches, off the trail, so as not to crush the poor wee beastie.
** It was in the former Wal-Mart parking lot. I imagine traffic's a little light there these days. I had right-of-way, and he was coasting through a stop sign. I don't know if he didn't see me, or if he did see me but is in possession of a brain with power enough to run a chipmunk or something, but the end result is, I braked, he braked (eventually), and I continued, unscathed but with pounding heart.
*** That's a bit over four bucks a gallon, for all y'all Americans out there.
**** By definition, in physics, W=mad (work = mass × acceleration × displacement), and is a vector. So, since I start out and end up at the same place, the d term is 0, and so the whole equation sorts out to nothing. (So, if I'd set up housekeeping, say, down at the mall, my physical work would have been some non-zero value. But then I'd have had to write out all kinds of change-of-address cards, and explain things to my wife, who is fine with my geekery in a theoretical kind of way, but probably not quite so understanding as to move just to settle a point. So... zero work done tonight.)

Mind you, I was born in Winnipeg, and that's two hundred kilometers away. a = v/t = d/t², and d is 200,000 meters, and... oh crap, t=~1,000,000,000s, square that, and divide by it... The work done in getting from there to here, over the course of my life, is, shall we say, negligible.

Oh well.

And yes. I know I'm a geek. Oh yes, how I know it.