The Quantum Bicycle

Today I thought "I wonder if braking is an eigenfunction of driving". That's when I realised I'd been working on Quantum mechanics too long.

I was actually thinking that because the key thing about eigenfunctions is that the eigenfunctions of a Hermitian operator form a complete orthonormal set. Yeah. Miss out an eigenfunction, and there are some parts of the vector space that (try as you might) you just can't span.

My bike has brakes of a particular kind. Whenever it rains they get wet. Whenerver they get wet, they become fantastically loud and piercing. So in these circumstances, I find the best thing to do is to avoid braking whenever possible.

But today is a saturday in May, which means the streets are jammed with tourists. This being Oxford, the streets are also narrow and therefore echo sound until it reaches hunting-Orca-meets-747 levels. This happened when I, courteosly, dismounted rather than doing the usual Oxford-cycler trick of running down pedestrians with a grime contenance.

Him: Gut Brakes
Me: nervous, selfconsciously monoglottal laugh

Je really ought to get sur le not talking any autres langues, what with my plan to alle' a France dans l'ete.

A step in the right direction.

Song in my head: "Lost Soul" by Kirk Adams

Incidentally, if any of you are forming a band, feel free to take today's title for a name. Let me know when you get on John Peel, I'll tape your show and later claim to be "the Fifth member of The QB".