Nyack ATTACK

Filed in General, March 14, 2009, 11:54 pm

After posting an overnight low of -1F on Tuesday, Saturday topped out at 63F. Peter and I had been planning a ride out to Nyack, New York for a few weeks now but because of tight deadlines at work I had blown him off. But with my code delivered, and an unseasonably warm Saturday approaching we decided that this was the weekend. We met on the west side bike path around 72nd st where I realized that although I had printed out the cue sheet from the New York Cycle Club, I left it at work…

Having left with no cue sheet, I anticipated a few wrong turns but I didn’t expect to get lost less than 2 miles from where we left. Somehow we took a wrong turn on the west side bike path and ended up on the wrong side of the Henry Hudson Parkway. After a couple failed attempts to find a way back to it (and one security guard yelling at us), we just decided to brave the quasi highway conditions on Riverside Drive. Eventually we got ourselves mixed in with a few kitted out roadies who we followed all the way through Harlem to the George Washington Bridge.

Once into New Jersey we mistakenly made our way to a park just on the other side of the Hudson where I saw what I would never expect to see less than 2 miles from Manhattan… deer. We corrected our course and made our way up (and down) Henry Hudson Dr which surprised us as an arboreal oasis wedged between New York and New Jersey. As we continued on we encountered only a few hikers, and fewer cars so on the descents I was able to tuck and take my bike to full spin. And then we found out why there were no cars…

A rock slide is surprisingly difficult to navigate in fiberglass soled shoes with cleats, and even more difficult when you have to carry your bike across it. Once across it, we had the road to ourselves until we left Henry Hudson and began the ascent of Alpine Approach Rd. I don’t know what kind of imagery a name like “Alpine Approach Rd.” invokes in the reader but for me it was an endless out of the saddle battle with a 23% gradient. Once at the top we regrouped for the relaxed approach into Nyack along 9W, and Piermont/River Rd. River Rd. offered us some beautiful views of the Hudson while we pedaled between impressive mansions and the docks where the owners tied up their yachts. Nyack turned out to be a quaint Main St. town with all of the retail activity of the town focused on a quarter mile, comfortably walkable street. We took a pit stop at Olive’s Bar (I highly recommend their black bean and avocado burger), I then made Peter wait while I pounded back a triple latte and we were on our way back to Manhattan.

The ride back was less scenic, but had a smaller sigma with respect to elevation and after three and a half hours of riding some boring flats were welcome (with the exception of Churchill Rd.). Even after a grand total of seven hours of riding, I was somehow able to meet Kate and her friends for a few drinks in the west village before collapsing. With more comfortable weather imminent, I plan a repeat Nyack attack as well as rides out to perhaps Philly, and Montauk…

Yer basic Nyack Ride
Flickr, why not?
The Route

Fun with Generators

Filed in programming, January 14, 2009, 9:07 pm Pointless post, just an example of a python generator (and list comprehension)

#! /bin/env python
from operator import add

originalPrincipal = 5300
ccAPR = 0.099

def ccBalance(principal, apr):
    while(principal > 1.0):
        minimum_payment = principal * 0.02
        interest = ((principal * apr) / 12)
        principal -= (minimum_payment - interest)
        yield (principal, minimum_payment, interest)

leCardDeRipoff = ccBalance(originalPrincipal, ccAPR)

payments = [(x,y,z) for x,y,z in leCardDeRipoff]

print "paying the minimum balance on a credit card with"
print "a current balance of $"+ str(originalPrincipal) +" and"
print "an APR of " + str(100 * ccAPR) + "% will",
print "take " + str(len(payments) / 12.0) + " years"
print "and result in paying $",
print str(reduce(add, [z for x,y,z in payments])) + " in interest"

This is by no means a fast solution, take it with a grain of salt…. and wordpress flattens everything in code tags…

Its that time of year again.

Filed in meta, January 4, 2009, 1:05 am

Its that time of year again where I have to decide whether or not I should renew my subscription for ericrose.net, a decision made slightly easier by the generous hosting fee that I get by hosting through QuickPacket.com (CamelCase, one word). Ericrose.net was initially created as a travelogue for my adventures in Germany, and it served that purpose quite well. I have since returned to the US and ericrose.net has, by virtue of that fact, lost a bit of it’s raison d’être. That is not to say that once I set foot back on American soil I returned to my life as it was, because I certainly haven’t, but rather that my time in Germany was dedicated to experiencing The New which was something that I didn’t feel like I was doing at Clemson. My life since Germany has been spent in Boston, a city that upon setting foot in for the first time I had to find a place to live, and New York, to where I moved before I had any promise of employment, so even after returning from Europe I have still maintained my affinity for seeking things fresh and exciting. Even though I continue living my life with the same wide eyed curiosity and adventuring geist that served me so well in the past I have, for some reason, declined to engage in the introspection required to synthesize my experiences, thoughts, feelings, and accomplishments into blog posts. That is not to say that such introspection does not occur, it means simply that the result of my introspection is not a blog post. There are many reasons for this: I like to annotate my posts with relevant links and this tends to take a lot of time, I am reluctant to blog about things that do not have pictures associated with them and I often forget to bring my camera with me, I am employed/was pursuing a graduate degree in computer science which necessarily reduced the discretionary free time that I could dedicate to maintaining a website versus my other hobbies (running, cycling, reading, etc.), I maintain other web presences that represent information that I would otherwise sculpt into a blog posting (flickr, facebook, google reader, and too a lesser extent: myspace, yelp, and about a dozen more).

In 2009 I hope to both do and think things worth writing about and write about them because as websites like twitter gain popularity, I, like David Brooks, retain an appreciation for long form thought.