On The Physics of Riding

A friend of mine was complaining that the mapping tool I use is not user friendly. So I tried the link I threw in my last post and you know what, my friend is right. Generating the map is a joke, but actually moving around and zooming in and out is awful. As part of my reader appreciation program, I will switch mapping tools, so far I have one vote for mapmyride.com, if anyone has another suggestion, feel free to comment below.

Anyway I am not going to redraw a hundred mile route, I have to get some work done today, but here are the turn by turn directions, anyone who wants to can certainly trace my route on their preferred system.

Starting from Queen and Eastern Ave, a couple of us went East to Woodbine then South on Woodbine – we were looking for someone – Woodbine turns and becomes Lakeshore. We took Lakeshore Blvd West all the way to Marie Curtis park where we met up with the rest of the club.

1. From Marie Curtis the club went on Lakeshore West to Mississauga Road.
2. We went North on Mississauga to Burnhamthrope Road.
3. We took Burnhamthrope West to 6’th Line (once we got to 9’th line the road becomes a nice country road, much more bucolic than many other routes).
4. We took 6’th Line North to Britannia Road.
5. We took Britannia to Appleby Line
6. We took Appleby North to Steeles Ave (Rattle Snake Hill is just south of Steeles, the hard core guys would then go East on Steeles to Bell School line, south on Bell School to Derry, west on Derry to Appleby, then back up Rattle Snake again! – I did no such thing.)
7. Continue on Appleby to Campbelville Road, then East, we were supposed to go south on Tremaine Road, but we made a mistake and went all the way to Highway 25 before heading south.
8. Highway 25, (aka Martin south to Main Street Milton)
9. Main Street East to Thompson Road, south on Thompson to Britannia.
10. East on Britannia to 5’th Line, which turns and South on 6’th Line.
11. East on Glenashton Dr (which was stupid, should have gone East further south) to Trafalgar.
12. South on Trafalgar to Lakeshore.

My friend also tried to describe the infamous Doughnut ride to me. Now I have heard that the origin of the name is from the fact that the ride started at a doughnut shop at Laird and Eglington which is no longer there. I have also been told that it is called a Doughnut because the ride forms a huge ring around the city. Whatever the case, my friend’s comment was, how can it be uphill all the time if it’s a ring? Well that question got me thinking about a painting by MC Escher called Waterfall. I would repost an image of Waterfall here, but the copyright looks complicated, so I’ll just link to it.

Anyway thoughts of waterfall reminded me of a joke I had come up with while riding. I have come to almost dread going downhill, because going downhill means I am going to end up going back uphill later on! Hence a revision to Sir Isaac Newton’s famous adage whatever goes up must come down, whatever goes down must come right on back up!

Or here’s another one, Albert Einstein used to wonder, if he could fly along side a beam of light as it traveled through space, what would it look like? Well it turns out you cannot travel faster than, or at the speed of, light. Well similarly, if you get dropped from the pack you cannot catch back up, the faster you pedal the faster the pack will move. And if you slow down, the pack simply gets further away. (This rule also applies in inline skating.)

In honour of Max Plank I propose a new unit of measure for cyclists, the shortest possible distance for a bike is an arc equal to a length of one section of chain on the biggest cassette gear after multiplying by the length of the spoke from the outer cassette gear to the wheel rim divided by 2 times pi, we can call it a Plank Bike Distance. A PBD is the shortest theoretical distance a bike can be pedaled.

How about the Uncertainty Principal as applied to bikes? Well we can know where the pack is supposed to go, or we can be leading the pack, but we cannot know where we are supposed to go if we are leading the pack, see my comment on turning south onto Tremaine Road above (step 7 in the turn by turn directions).

Shades of Schrodinger’s cat? If we put a cyclist on a busy city street with door prizes and idiotic drivers armed with cell phones (throw in a few nails and pot holes for good measure and maybe some train tracks), will the cyclist still be alive after an hour?

As we have a Plank Distance how about a Plank Unit of Energy - maybe as much food energy as there is in one pack of hammer gel? Or a Plank time duration - the time between first and second place in a cirterium? I welcome suggestions for those ones.