Lecture was good today. That's right, there was only one—just CS at 2:15 on Fridays. Now that the last assignment's been given, lectures are more overview-of-possible-future-branches than anything necessary for the final. Perversely, I'm much more interested in this stuff than in the nitty-gritty, and had no trouble staying awake as Plummer talked about the differences between what we've been doing and OOP (there aren't very many). That Deepal had already sort of explained it to me during the drive from Assateague to DC helped a bunch, too.

I went to the first-ever Palo Alto Critical Mass. Then Roger IMed me, and I explained it all to him, so I'm just going to paraphrase. It's an alternative transportation awareness movement that got started in San Francisco in 1992. That sounds like a mouthful, but basically you just get a whole bunch of bicyclists to caravan visibly, audibly, and sometimes raucously through the main thoroughfares of a city to increase visibility of cycling. It happens regularly in major cities around North America and the rest of the globe, but this is the first in good old PA. There were 40 or 50 of us who met up at the Oval and went for a leisurely hour-long ride down University and through downtown. Because Palo Alto is already a fairly bike-aware community, the ride went really smoothly. At the very worst, we got flipped a couple of fingers; about a quarter of the drivers we passed were actually friends of people in the bike pack and just smiled and waved and shouted hello.

This sounds like an ecocommunist type of thing, as Su would say, but the fact is that a whole bunch of different ideologies were represented. As we rode, we cheered, waved at pedestrians, drivers, and other bikers, and hollered stuff as we pleased. The "stuff" ranged from "Burn the cars!" to "Bike when you can!" The latter is more similar to my point of view, though it's good that there are the extremists. The cheesy saying goes like this: "Shoot for the stars so that, when you fall, you'll land on the clouds." What I mean is that it's nearly impossible to achieve your optimum goal; by having the far left, even if it fails, they at least bring up the mean to a considerable degree. The ride will probably happen monthly or bimonthly from now on, so if you're a Stanfordite, join us next time!

On the subject of cycling, I really ought to get myself a set of simple bike tools in anticipation of the time when I no longer live in the same building as a bike guru who selflessly offers his services and his metal gadgets. And maybe learn to do some simple repairs. This paragraph was just an aside and a personal reminder to find some when I'm home, maybe at the bike shop in Highland Park, and sales tax is a whopping two percent less.

I'd missed Branner dinner by the time I got back, and so went across the street to Stern, where there wasn't really anyone left whom I knew other than a dude named Brian from downstairs, who was really nice and beckoned me over to where he was sitting with some of the men's crew team. They were a really funny bunch; it's refreshing any time I exit one of the concentric spheres (West Wing, Branner, Stanford) that encapsulate my life. Overall, a fun afternoon to brace me for the next ten days. Whee!