I’ll sing to you this soft lute, and shew you all alive
The world, when every particle of dust breathes forth its joy.
William Blake,1790, The Ancient of Days
“By observing the world, we participate in making it.”
Frank Wilczek, Fundamentals: Ten Keys to Reality
January offers so many bike paths at latitudes with small numbers. In Kentucky, Ol’ Man Winter freezes bike trails and obstructs Spring’s thaw. Bardstown remains frozen near latitude 38, Sarasota energizes the 27 latitude, while Key west soaks up the winter sun at latitude 24. The Tropic of Cancer (23.4394 degrees) marks the most northerly latitude at which the sun can appear directly overhead at noon. Oldognewtrek’s 2023 escapades launch a two week trek from Sarasota, Florida to Key West and back. As Bob Dylan trolls, “Key West is fine and fair, If you lost your mind, you will find it there.”
So, as long as I’m able, “I’m along for the ride.”
What a thrill to escape Kentucky’s freezing rain and bike where the weather suits my clothes. Stripped down to biking essentials, this Old Dog transports credit cards not camping gear. What a gas to spin down Legacy Trail, charged up by the Florida sun, cycling Canopy Road in summer gear (lighter mass). Say good-bye to winter induced SAD and hello to a serotonin inspired tan (pics below).
Right or wrong I listen to Audible while cruising Rt. 1, the overseas highway (pics below). I prefer nonfiction because “fiction has to make sense.” Frank Wilczek’s Ten Fundamentals of Physics is my current “books on tape.” Particle physics is a bizarre science. It’s not science fiction, but physicists do create elemental particles out of thin air. We are simply trillions of elemental particles with differing, mass, charge and spin. Every day is only a probability. Each week may or may not happen, but every additional month biking increases the Florida Key’s and my entropy (pic below). I’m yelling to the universe, “How can you be in two places at once when you are nowhere at all? Frank Wilczek demonstrated once again, “truth is stranger than fiction.”
. Frank cycled through man’s historical understanding of mother nature. The traihead originates with creation myths and continued like a single tack until Democritus, Epicurus, and Lucretius (4th-5th centuries B.C.) . The Greek Atomists proposed that matter was composed of tiny, indivisible particles called “atoms”, which arranged themselves within the “void.” Aristotle rebuked Atomists because “nature abhors a vacuum.” The void back then meant “nothingness” and Aristotle had no concept of zero. He did not know the answer to three minus three. So it goes. But in any case, Greek philosophers created an orderly and deterministic world. out of the four elements…. earth, water, air and fire. Think of billiard balls hitting each other.
For the next twenty centuries philosophers speculated in vain for a “divinely inspired” description of mother nature. Sages were demoted to “domestics” in this “dark age” peloton when Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton seized the day. They chased data, and recorded empirical observations, not speculations. This scientific method ushered in the Age of Reason. One again in this deterministic world, billard balls hit and recoil from each other in an orderly fashion. Newtonian physics reigned absolute on Earth and in Heaven. Time, space, mass and energy are separate entities. All remain universal, absolute and deterministic.
Today, physicists can pick apart the proton into essential elementary particles differing by mass, charge and spin. Using smaller wavelengths with stronger energy beams they photograph the smallest building blocks in the universe, electrons, quarks, gluons and bosons. As you might guess from the title, these lego blocks have different mass, charge and spin. Physicists can’t smash these particles into smaller pieces. What’s worse, these elementary entanglements can be two places at once. I, you, he she, it, we, and they are both particle and wave, avatars of interfering energy fields.
Nothing is preordained in this brave new quantum world. Space-time, energy fields, and matter are all relative… not absolute or deterministic. Objects and events only enjoy a probability, the billard balls may or may not hit each other. Schrodinger’s cat may or may not be alive. But no matter how strange this quantum world appears, physicists manipulated subatomic particles using quantum mechanics to create your iPhone and GPS. Today, “Mother Earth” and the universe she revolves in are relative, not preordained nor absolute . If truth isn’t stranger than fiction then i don’t know what is.
At 72 I feel like the two year old toddler that can’t stop asking why. Each answer produces another question until all facts are exhausted and you come face to face with the mysterious unknown. Why is the sky blue? Because the red, visible light is absorbed. Why is red absorbed? Because red’s longer wavelength bumps into more air molecules. Why is red light wavelengths longer than blue? The questions race backward until only elementary particles remain. These particles are differentiated by differing quantum mass, charge, and spin. Crank the pedal one more time and we cycle into speculation and 2023 creation myths. That my take on elementary physics.
Duallies and overloaded RV’s chug and cough past this Easy Rider. Some honk and a few swear (pic above). Southerly winds helped escort the bike to Fort Meyers Beach. Hurricaine Ian’s destruction was obvious near Cape Coral and increased exponentially when approaching San Carlos Bay. Stores on Estero Blvd had been washed away and shrimp boats were tossed on top of each other (pic below)
Climate change creates increased volatility. The surface temperature near Fort Meyers was 82 degrees Fahrenheit, but sections of the Gulf hovered around 90 degrees. Temperature rise increases an exceptional event’s probability.
Friday morning Key West Express ferried the bike and me to Key West by noon. After a weekend with friends the adventure resumed (pics above and below). Baby’s coffee sits at mile 15 and seven mile bridge crosses Moser channel at mile 40. The selfie below is mile 72 on Islamorada. I’m hoping that age is just a number and 72 will spawn great memories.
The 125 miles of Rt. 1 from Key West to Florida City have wide shoulders and dedicated bike paths next to azure oceans and bays. (pic above) North of Florida City, the 25 miles of Rt. 997 has a dedicated bike path straight to Rt. 41. After 80 miles across Big Cypress and the Everglades I stopped for the night at Everglades City. The next day included a four hour kayak trip (pic below).
The remaining two days I rode side roads paralleling Rt. 41 until I returned to Canopy Road on Manosota Key.
Particle physicists explode the smallest elements to assemble the cosmos. Greek Philosophers contemplated the abundant heavens to explain the four elements… earth, water, air, and fire. And in the process they invented astrology to foretell destinies. The Greek’s venerated the three fates Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos. The daughters of night (Nix) controlled human life and death. Clotho spun the “thread”, Lachesis dispensed it, and Atropos cut the thread (pic below). Apollo, although immortal and could pull the sun from horizon to horizon was unable to alter the three Moirai’s decisions..
As a romantic, I prefer William Blake’s Cosmology. Create a balance between heaven and earth, imagination and intellect, innocence and experience, Unite wide-eyed wonder with jaded cynicism. (below left, The Ancient of Days 1790) (Below right Dinos Alive 2/4/23)
For me, January is a great month to enjoy warm winter days with azure skies and turquoise seas. Ospreys chirp and whistle while circling overhead. The bike glides over a smooth, flat bike path. Crocodiles, cars, and gophers are nowhere to be seen (pics below). The briny smell of sea spray permeates the air. At the end of the day a thin salt crust coats my skin. Palm fronds chatter to the wind, “Be yourself, every one else is already taken.”
So on down the road this mass of elementary particles will recharge in the sun and spin tall tales.
If that’s not nice I don’t know what is.