To: George

George Harrison was known as "the quiet Beatle." He may have been quite in personality, but he was the "loudest" in his songs. Nothing against any of the other Beatles. "Here Comes the Sun" had to be the song that the Beatles are most remembered for in our generation because of the movie: "The Parent Trap." George wrote it while in Eric Clapton's garden. Oh sweet, quiet, George, this is for you. (I am sorry about my obsession and please pardon some of the language.)

Omg. Love the hair.

You look look Dhani or vise versa.

Two of the best things in one pic.

It's tea time!

The comment is self explanatory.

I do.

Poor George.

I think he likes what he sees.

George Harrison with Peter Tork of  The Monkees

(pardon the language, sorry)

*I faint*

My fave pic of George.

(pardon the language)

George talking with Mike Nesmith of The Monkees. 2 out of 3 of my Favorite singers!!!!1

How??!?!!? He is so Georgeous!

My Secret Math

Yep I can relate to math as a secret. The math that I do is really a secret. No one can hear it. It's called mental math.

I went to Annunciation Catholic School from kindergarten to seventh grade. To put it nicely, I love Academy much  more. The math curriculum was very easy, for "advanced math."  One day, during a particularly easy lesson, I wanted to challenge myself more. She put a "difficult" fraction problem on the board and told us to solve it in our notebooks, showing our work. "Show my work," yeah right! I solved that problem mentally in about 5 seconds. I couldn't write down that I solved the problem without writing it down, so I shouted it out. The teacher got a weird look on her face and told me to meet with her after class. Uh, oh.

So I met with her after class. She wasn't mad that I did mental math on that problem. She gave me a bunch of sheets in a folder and told me to do them. I did them and was still bored in class later that week.

Every day after school I had swimming practice. I would do the fraction math while swimming. Sometimes I got so distracted, I missed the set or the interval. Well, excuse me, I had a math problem to finish! I started doing percents in dance class just to keep me entertained. Doing a double pirouette was, in a sense, doing 200% of a pirouette (if you didn't fall out of it after 1.75 or 175% of a turn). Yeah that got hard with all the technique to focus on.

Every Saturday, my dad and I get groceries for the week from Smith's. One week we only had to get $92.16 worth of groceries and my dad gave the cashier $100. I figured out that we would get $7.84 in change. For the longest time, I would calculate the change back (if i was correct i would get to keep the coin change). After a while, I had to stop because my math became more challenging as I moved to Academy and I didn't have too much time for mental math. That was  about 3 years ago. From time to time, I still try to do mental math at the grocery store to keep my skill from getting too rusty. So far it has worked.

9%. Well...more like 25%

About two years ago, my dad decided to go to Manitou Springs in Colorado for our family vacations. My dad loves trains and has "trained" us to like them (pardon the pun). We see at least one train museum on each of our vacations. We try to ride one also. Now that's beside the point.

In Manitou Springs, we stayed at this quaint hotel that was a five minute walk from the train museum. The train was a "cog train." From the side, it looked like a normal train, but from the front it didn't. Most trains only use two tracks and can be either narrow gauge or standard. The width of standard gauge is 4 feet and 8.5 inches. Narrow gauge is used for transportation on flatter areas. Narrow gauge is about 3 ft. This gauge is used for hauling goods up a mountain side.

The Manitou and Pike's Peak Railway had a grade of 25%. Some fancy mathematician probably used an inverse tangent to find the angle of elevation. To get the angle of elevation, he would use this equation: 
tan-1(25/100). Remember that a 25% grade is going up 25 feet for every 100 feet traveled horizontally. After all the math is done, the result would be approximately a 14 degree slope that the train would have to climb up. That is considered horrendous to normal trains. If they had to pull cars up that steep of an incline, they wouldn't get very far. The train would be pulled down due to the weight of the cars. A 25% grade means that the train climbs 25 feet up for every 100 feet traveled horizontally. In math terms, the rise of the train is over the run: the equation for slope (rise over run). 

On a 2-4% slope, the train would have to travel 27 miles to get to the summit of Pike's Peak. An inventor didn't want the trip to the weather station to be that long, so he came up with a plan to make a train track that has a cog in the middle of the two narrow gauge tracks to help get supplies to the top. Now the trip is 8.9 miles, thanks to the cog. The cog prevents the train from sliding backwards when it has a heavy load. Train tracks are metal and the wheels are also metal. If the track of the wheels get wet, it gets very slippery. The cog is like a "safety wheel." It helps pull the train in most weather. 

When we rode the train, it was very scary to look back and see how far down we just were. On the way down the tour guide told us if the engine brakes and wheel brakes don't stop us, we will have two springs to ease the impact: Manitou Springs and Colorado Springs. (haha)

It was a great vacation and I would like to go back and see the non-burnt scenery. I took all of these pictures.

This a picture of the cog track (the one in the middle.)

The reason the train is slanted is because of the 25% incline up to the Summit of Pike's Peak.

This is a close up of the cog and the teeth on the cog track that pull the train up the mountain. That is a piece of decommissioned track that the train is sitting on. It is to show how the cog track works.