David Segal, writing for the New York Times, describing the hotels near some of the prominent Olympic venues in Sochi:
To appreciate the hotels in this area it is probably a good idea to think of them not as hotels but rather a rare opportunity to experience life in a centrally planned, Soviet-style dystopia. Only then will you understand, perhaps even enjoy, the peculiar mix of grandiosity and bungling that defines these buildings. Though called hotels, they look like austere, upscale apartments inspired by the Eastern bloc — Bauhaus meets the Super 8.
I’ll have to borrow that last bit, “Bauhaus meets the Super 8,” when I write my next critical Trip Advisor review.
There are a lot gems in this article, but the one that explains the attitude towards the slow progress on finishing the hotels and shopping areas is described by a shrug. “It’s Russia.”
Last year, United followed Delta’s lead to require flyers seeking elite status to qualify with at least 25,000 miles flown and at least $2,500 spent. In exchange for all those miles and cash, United hasn’t announced any great new offerings for its elite flyers. Meanwhile, Delta offers Wi-Fi on most every flight, first-class on regional jets, and a pretty compelling airport lounge (with free olives).
And they also made this 1980s-themed in-flight safety video.
My favorite part of the video is when you see the couple hear about Wi-Fi and shrug in ignorance, “I don’t know what that is.” The one 1980s artifact in this video that I had completely forgotten was Teddy Ruxpin, which you see with seat belt fastened. And, yes, Alf need help securing his oxygen mask.
Although the video is a bit long, it makes me wonder, “why can’t United do something like that?”
If you’ve visited New York or moved here from somewhere else, like I did many years ago, it might seem like things move fast. Indeed, the pace of a big city can seem blinding compared to a small town or country village. When I first moved here, time seemed to pass a lot quicker in New York than it did, where I lived before, in sleepy Santa Barbara, California.
While the frenzy of city life might have something to do with that, I’ve always wondered whether there was an astrological or geological reason that time “felt” faster here, even on days I didn’t leave my apartment. Could it be that being farther north, at a higher latitude, made time pass more quickly?
At the poles, you are basically standing in place, not really rotating at all. But at the equator, Kadish determined, you are whipping around the earth at 1,040 miles per hour, hence why the above formula uses a constant of 1040 mph.
Is this why time seemed to move faster in New York than it did in Santa Barbara?
Location
Latitude
Rotational Speed
Time to rotate 6,000 miles
Santa Barbara
34.417°
857.95 mph
6h 59m 31s
New York
40.783°
787.47 mph
7h 37m 8s
Time may have seemed faster because I experienced time, not as a velocity, but as a distance. For example, in Santa Barbara, it would take me just under seven hours to “travel” 6,000 miles around the earth’s axis. If I woke up at 9:00 AM, it would be about 4:00 PM when I “travelled” that distance at 34° N latitude. In New York, however, traveling that same distance would take more time. Assuming the same 9:00 AM wake-up time, it would be 4:37 PM, closer to 5:00 PM, by the time I travelled that same distance at 40° N latitude. In other words, it would feel like I“lost” 37 minutes. No wonder I’m often late.
To experience time differently due to latitude, you probably need to travel pretty far. That would require traveling by airplane. But then jet lag, traveling across time zones, could disrupt your sense of time anyway. Traveling for a few days, such as leisure or business trip, is also quite disruptive to how you experience time because you’re on a different schedule, often more hectic, than what you’re accustomed. To really get this effect, you probably need to be settled in one place having just left some other place. That probably only happens when you’re relocated across a “tall” country like the US, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, India, or China or between countries at different latitudes, such as UK to India.
Until I saw Kadish’s post, this was all speculation. I didn’t have to scientific tools to approach this problem. But his using basic trigonometry, tools I haven’t used in a long time, compelled to outline my theory here.
My first and oldest piece of wearable technology is something I still have and use to this day. Since about 2003, I’ve been using a Polar S720i, a cycling-specific heart rate monitor, to track my feeble heart and body try to power my bicycle up a hill. State of the art for its time, it is still useful. It records your heart rate, speed, and cadence data for up to eight hours of cycling. Over the years, I never ran out of memory until last June on the 150-mile Ride to Montauk, which took me just under ten hours of pedaling to complete.
I have had a Polar S720i since 2003, and it has required a few batteries replaced over that time.
Ahead of its time, it can upload your cycling and heart-rate data to your computer, provided you have a Windows PC. As a Mac user, I spent countless hours and about $100, buying USB-to-serial adapters and proprietary software, getting it to interface with my Mac. That setup, by the way, still works today.
Another “feature” of the S720i is that will repeatedly beep at you when you were outside of your target heart-rate zone. This was cool back when that whole zone-training was a thing. I used to “train” that way, but I have found it way more satisfying to just pedal to a brew pub or a train station, or better yet, a brew pub next to a train station.
Over the years, the battery on my Polar has needed replacing. Polar warns you not to have the battery replaced by another other than an Authorized Service Center. You can ship it to their main center in Lake Success, New York, which is only about 30 miles from Long Island City, or you can take it another authorized service center, the most distant of which is in Los Angeles. Guess where I went? Time-Tec in Los Angeles is on Hill Street in the downtown Jewelry District. It occupies a very small space on the second floor of a building occupied by other watch-repair shops. I’ve gone here multiple times to repair my Polar, and they have questioned my sanity in coming all this way. I explain that I am visiting family in the region and that I appreciate their while-you-wait service. (It only takes about five minutes to do simple repairs.)
Also, Downtown LA is a bit more interesting these days than the former home of the United Nations. Incidentally, I can clearly see current UN from Long Island City, which makes for a lovely view.
They moved for a reason, right?
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One of my favorite coffee places in the whole world is Cafe Dulce in LA’s Little Tokyo district. In true Southern California fashion, this gem is in a mall, specifically the Japanese Village Plaza around 1st Street and Central Avenue. They not only serve the best pour over coffee I’ve ever had, so much so that I ultimately became a Chemex loyalist, but they also bake some of the most creative donuts south of the Pearl District.
On my recent trip over the holidays, I noticed Cafe Dulce was selling a five-pack of single-serve, portable pour-over packs. These are made by an Arcadia, California–outfit called The Humble Cup. Each single-serve pack consists of a sturdy paper filter that sits on a cup. To brew, you pour hot water into the filter, similar to a Hario-style dripper. It includes locally roasted coffee, finely ground for the paper filter.
I brought a pack home and brewed a cup yesterday to stave off jet lag.
Brewing a cup is the same as a pour-over, except that you need to constantly keep pouring due to the filter’s small capacity. Because you’re not weighing and grinding coffee beans, the process is considerably quicker. However, because your coffee is already ground, you’re sacrificing freshness. The instructions recommend starting with a small amount of water, presumably to allow the coffee to bloom, and then pouring about another six-to-eight ounces of hot water. I didn’t measure the water like I do with the Chemex, but I eyeballed it to a little less than the volume of my usual cup.
The coffee was a tad stale, undoubtedly due to the coffee being pre-ground, but it held up well. The Humble Cup’s developer, Leon Li, insists he wanted to use good coffee, and it shows. The coffee was a pleasant departure from burnt, dark roast coffee that one endures with Starbucks VIA. The Humble Cup five-pack I bought came with three different single-origin coffees: El Salvador, Colombia, and Ethiopia. I drew the latter in my first brew and found it having a pleasant chocolate flavor to it with hints of citrus. (And here are the official cupping notes.)
Along with a pack of mixed nuts and a hand-sanitizer bottle, I’m adding a Humble Cup to my travel backpack.
Also, let me know when it comes to New York, as it is currently available only in Los Angeles.
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Remember how I was getting fed up with Ron Burgundy? Not only did he grace the cover of the current issue of Rolling Stone, which include two long feature articles that overshadowed the cover story, but I also encountered Burgundy at a Liquor Barn in Lexington, Kentucky.
Growing up in Southern California and having LAX as our home airport, these words greeted us whenever we went to pick up or drop off someone at the airport.
The white zone is for immediate loading and unloading only. No parking.
Watch a movie from the 1980s that uses LAX as a location—Lethal Weapon comes to mind, but it’s been yeeears since I’ve seen it so I’m probably wrong—and you’ll hear that recorded announcement. En español, too.
Yesterday, we arrived in Louisville, Kentucky for our first trip of the holiday season. As we waited for our ride, I noticed that the passenger loading zone outside of the terminal had turned into short-term parking. And there was no police presence keeping these drivers honest.
The curb at the terminal acts like short-term parking at SDF.
During our ten-minute wait at curb, I saw two cars there the entire time. One big white Escalade SUV had even blocked the crosswalk and wheelchair ramp. But in all fairness, I don’t think the driver had any idea that the crosswalk even existed.
One of the nice things about flying in and out of Louisville is that it’s a pleasantly small airport. There were no traffic jams caused by the illegally parked cars outside of the curb. There were no pesky pedestrians using the crosswalk impeding the flow of light traffic. For what should be a busy holiday travel day, it was pretty quiet there. That’s probably why the rules need not apply here.
The Weitlaufs began the tradition of riding the Hilly Hundred back in 1981, when two brothers took their bikes from Kentucky to Indiana. The group grew to include their wives, a sister and a few of their children. It became an almost-annual ritual for them. Over the years, the tradition stopped, although one of the children kept the tradition alive by riding each year with his friends.
This year, the family planned to return to Indiana to revive the tradition. I had signed up back in May because the family had discussed returning to the ride, and I figured that if someone not related had signed up, it might encourage the rest of the family to participate. In fact, getting ready for this ride was a a big reason for my riding with the New York Cycle Club STS group and for pushing myself to ride 150 miles to Montauk.
Having travelled quite a bit, I had become used to getting myself from one place to another, but getting my bike to another state was an entirely different matter. After investigating several options, which I will save for another post, I settled on shipping my bike by train. Three days later, it arrived safely in Indianapolis and from there we drove it to Bloomington, near the start of the weekend’s ride.
Day 1
Riding in this year’s Hilly were four Weitlauf men, one woman, and me. The first day presented a sizable challenge. A steady rain fell, starting overnight and continuing into the ride’s 9:00 AM start time. Rain in itself is not the end of the world, but every cyclist hates cold rain. I’d rather ride in “30° and dry” than “40° and wet.” But the rain stopped around 10:30, and once the sun started shining, we headed to the ride’s starting point in Ellettsville, Indiana. By noon, we were pedaling on the road.
Climbing some of the course’s biggest hills had terrified me. I had read that the Hilly Hundred included some very steep hills, with grades between 15% and 20%, and significantly more challenging than the steepest climb I had done with the club Little Tor and its 10% grade.
But as I rode, it wasn’t as bad as I had thought. Sure, there were some steep hills, but it turns out that those grades were maximum grades. Little Tor, however, was a 10% average grade, and the steepness on that climb varies greatly. It turned out that the hills on the Hilly Hundred were similar to those found north of New York City, in Bergen and Rockland counties, and along the Hudson Valley.
Once I had realized that this ride was as challenging as some club rides, I stopped worrying about the challenge and enjoyed the scenery. There were plenty of signs of autumn: dried out corn fields, trees with brown and red leaves, and fallen foliage sprinkled on the asphalt. It was a much different experience than the previous week’s ride alongside the bays and creeks of Newport Beach, California.
Day 2
The second day was considerably warmer, even with our starting at 9:30 AM, and the route was considerably shorter: 43 miles versus the previous day’s 55. That made for a much more pleasant ride, even if some of us were still a bit sore. The hills did seem a bit more challenging than the day before.
On the first day of the ride, my biggest accomplishment was that I didn’t have to walk my bike up any of the hills. The same remained true on the second day, until the very last big climb of the day: Mount Tabor Road. Although the climb is short, about 0.2 miles, it is a steep 20% grade, requiring you to get out of the saddle. But I jumped off the saddle too early and by the time the hill was steepest, I couldn’t stand up anymore. I ended up walking up like these people, in this photo from 1977.
Riding on consecutive days wasn’t as tough as I had feared. I treated the second day’s ride as a recovery ride and kept my heart rate about ten beats lower than the day before. It also helped that there was plenty of food, such as fried chicken, couscous, quinoa, pasta salad, pumpkin donuts and muffins, ice cream, fresh-picked apples, and apple cider. Also, on the first day of the ride, I had bought a pair of wool Sriracha socks at the vendor tent. Having forgotten to pack any wool socks, these were a great pickup. I’ll treasure them always!
The Hilly Hundred is a great ride. In terms of difficulty, it’s about the same as the full 100-mile route of Escape New York, except that the latter takes place in one day not two. But this was a great excuse to ride with a great group of people and in a place a little different from New York or California.
