Vista Point

California Quail, Tennessee Valley

I need to adopt the stoicism of a California quail. The wind ruffles his feathers? So what. It's just the laws of physics, so how could it lower your spirits. On my morning walk I noticed the wind was coming up already, which means I'm going to have to plow into it on my mid-day bike ride. It's not even a big deal, though, and in fact it's just a slight diminution of the pure excellence of riding with little or no wind. Since the psychological laws of nature are every bit as real as the physical laws, there's some truth to the saying that it's all in how you look at it.

Quail Calling

I was listening to a report on the marvel of the Mt. Diablo viewshed this morning on KQED radio when the reporter expressed her joy that, looking through binoculars, she could see the Golden Gate Bridge, sixty miles away. As it happens, I had recently measured the distance between Mt. Tam and Mt. Diablo, so I had a pretty good idea how the reporter mistakenly doubled the actual distance.

Anyone who uses Google Maps knows you can plot a route from, say, Mt. Diablo to the Golden Gate Bridge, and get not just the directions but also the distance to be traveled. But that's road distance. Obviously, when you look through binoculars, your vision does not follow that same route! (I was thanked by KQED for pointing out the error in time for them to fix it before the next airing.)

Of course you can also use Google Maps to plot a straight-line distance. Simply right-click on your departure point, then choose "Measure distance" from the pop-up menu. Then right-click on your destination point and choose "Distance to here" on the pop-up menu. Now you can read the distance on the ruler.

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