Today was probably our first run in "fall weather." It took some time for fall to come, but today it was probably only in the 50's when we ran. Ira even talked about breaking out the long sleeve shirts and running pants.
Today we began with the Stanford Police Station, which is right next to the fire department on the corner of Campus Drive and Serra. Not much to say about this building. Um, it's a police station. We did successfully cross through the round-a-bout, and Ira told a story of how he almost hit a cyclist. I wonder how the police feel about the new round-a-bout. I bet they don't like it.
Here's one weird thing I've never noticed before. There's an area we've visited a lot that has all these older buildings behind the new engineering quad. I've mentioned a bunch of times that, in the master Stanford construction plan, I'd bet these are probably the next bunch of buildings to get torn down, since they are old and pretty unremarkable. Most of them are named after trees: Cedar, Cypress, Spruce, Pine, Redwood. Well, today Ira pointed out that our destination, Polya Hall, is not named after a tree. Actually, he said, "Is Polya a type of tree?" No, Ira, it is named after famous mathematician George Polya. You should check out his book called "How to Solve It" which teaches you how to solve math problems of any kind. They should really give him a nicer looking building.
Next we ran the short distance to the nearby "tree trailers", which are a group of portables that are all named after trees. This time we ran to Poplar, which is as unremarkable as the rest. The only thing of note here is that we tried to go around one trailer before realizing we were boxed in and needed to backtrack. We've been here at least five times, so you'd think we would have figured it out by now.
Then, we ran back to White Plaza for the Stanford Post Office. Fun fact: when I was a student at Stanford my randomly assigned P.O. box number was 11011. I majored in computer science, and 11011 is 27 in binary, and 27 is my favorite number! How about that? (OK, next stop.)
The whole run Ira was telling me that our next stop, the Press Building, was torn down due to construction. Well, guess what? There was no sign that said "Press Building", although we did find signs that said "Communications and Publications" with the name of various Stanford papers, so we were convinced we found the right place. And, yes, we touched the door like always. Thanks for asking.
We then had a long run through the Quad and the Oval and past the Masoleum to the Psychiatry building. It was kind of a cool run down these paths by the Masoleum. (I feel compelled to say that, alphabetically, a building named Price should have come right before this stop, but we inexplicably had to go there on our previous run.) Anyways, this looks like a nice new building, and some people gave us a curious look as we touched the door and then ran away.
We had some good conversation on this run, touching on dream dinner guests for Ira's dorm, the NPR Sunday puzzle, "The Daily Show", and a few other topics that aren't blog-worthy. One conversation topic involved our friend Truth, his genius professor father, and an obscure math topic called a "Latin orthogonal square." Ira made me promise to look it up and mention it in this blog, since I didn't actually know what it was. OK, here goes: imagine a Sudoku-like grid, where each row and column contains every possible digit. A Sudoku is 9x9, but you could imagine a smaller one that is 3x3 or 4x4, for example. That's a "Latin square"; there are lots of ways to fill in such a grid, depending on the size. Now, imagine taking two different Latin squares and laying them on top of each other. You'd end up with pairs of numbers "on top of each other", right? If your two grids make every possible pair of numbers, then they are called "orthogonal." Ta da! You've got "Latin orthogonal squares!"
Our last stop was Puichon, one of those creepy run-down buildings over by Searsville Road. We really need to find out what is going on here. We had one crazy discovery: at the back of Puichon, which looks almost abandoned, there is a working soda vending machine. This must be the most obscure, least utilized soda machine on campus, if not the world.
Distance: 6.4 miles (Although, I feel compelled to say that I always round down to the nearest tenth, and today's run, according to Ira's watch, was 6.498 miles. How long is 0.002 miles? Is that one or two steps? So, yeah, we were pretty close to 6.5 miles.) Our total distance is now 141.1, and we're done with all the P's!
Today we began with the Stanford Police Station, which is right next to the fire department on the corner of Campus Drive and Serra. Not much to say about this building. Um, it's a police station. We did successfully cross through the round-a-bout, and Ira told a story of how he almost hit a cyclist. I wonder how the police feel about the new round-a-bout. I bet they don't like it.
Here's one weird thing I've never noticed before. There's an area we've visited a lot that has all these older buildings behind the new engineering quad. I've mentioned a bunch of times that, in the master Stanford construction plan, I'd bet these are probably the next bunch of buildings to get torn down, since they are old and pretty unremarkable. Most of them are named after trees: Cedar, Cypress, Spruce, Pine, Redwood. Well, today Ira pointed out that our destination, Polya Hall, is not named after a tree. Actually, he said, "Is Polya a type of tree?" No, Ira, it is named after famous mathematician George Polya. You should check out his book called "How to Solve It" which teaches you how to solve math problems of any kind. They should really give him a nicer looking building.
Next we ran the short distance to the nearby "tree trailers", which are a group of portables that are all named after trees. This time we ran to Poplar, which is as unremarkable as the rest. The only thing of note here is that we tried to go around one trailer before realizing we were boxed in and needed to backtrack. We've been here at least five times, so you'd think we would have figured it out by now.
Then, we ran back to White Plaza for the Stanford Post Office. Fun fact: when I was a student at Stanford my randomly assigned P.O. box number was 11011. I majored in computer science, and 11011 is 27 in binary, and 27 is my favorite number! How about that? (OK, next stop.)
The whole run Ira was telling me that our next stop, the Press Building, was torn down due to construction. Well, guess what? There was no sign that said "Press Building", although we did find signs that said "Communications and Publications" with the name of various Stanford papers, so we were convinced we found the right place. And, yes, we touched the door like always. Thanks for asking.
We then had a long run through the Quad and the Oval and past the Masoleum to the Psychiatry building. It was kind of a cool run down these paths by the Masoleum. (I feel compelled to say that, alphabetically, a building named Price should have come right before this stop, but we inexplicably had to go there on our previous run.) Anyways, this looks like a nice new building, and some people gave us a curious look as we touched the door and then ran away.
We had some good conversation on this run, touching on dream dinner guests for Ira's dorm, the NPR Sunday puzzle, "The Daily Show", and a few other topics that aren't blog-worthy. One conversation topic involved our friend Truth, his genius professor father, and an obscure math topic called a "Latin orthogonal square." Ira made me promise to look it up and mention it in this blog, since I didn't actually know what it was. OK, here goes: imagine a Sudoku-like grid, where each row and column contains every possible digit. A Sudoku is 9x9, but you could imagine a smaller one that is 3x3 or 4x4, for example. That's a "Latin square"; there are lots of ways to fill in such a grid, depending on the size. Now, imagine taking two different Latin squares and laying them on top of each other. You'd end up with pairs of numbers "on top of each other", right? If your two grids make every possible pair of numbers, then they are called "orthogonal." Ta da! You've got "Latin orthogonal squares!"
Our last stop was Puichon, one of those creepy run-down buildings over by Searsville Road. We really need to find out what is going on here. We had one crazy discovery: at the back of Puichon, which looks almost abandoned, there is a working soda vending machine. This must be the most obscure, least utilized soda machine on campus, if not the world.
Distance: 6.4 miles (Although, I feel compelled to say that I always round down to the nearest tenth, and today's run, according to Ira's watch, was 6.498 miles. How long is 0.002 miles? Is that one or two steps? So, yeah, we were pretty close to 6.5 miles.) Our total distance is now 141.1, and we're done with all the P's!
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