[Author's note: 'Not sure how interesting this will be to you folks, but since I'm out of town this week, it's all I could come up with for "Central Oregon tech" - couple of geeky sports links, and a fun physics thought exercise. Feel free to bitch in the comments if you think this is a waste of time. 
]
I’m a big fan of XKCD.com, an online comic strip that is unabashedly about and for geeks. The author, Randall Munroe, in a recent blog post, talks about sledding on an icy hill and the (quite natural I think) thought exercises about conversion of potential energy to kinetic energy that it evokes. This seemed particularly apropos given how icy the sledding hill at Wanoga Snow Park was last week. (‘Not sure about what it’s like this week since I’m in Manhattan right now, where it is cold, sleety, and depressingly flat 
). I’ve often found myself doing similar calculations while recreating in the great outdoors and this inspired me to work through a problem that’s bugged me for a while:
How many calories do you burn when you ride from Bend up to Mt. Bachelor? (more…)