The Sand Makes It Taller: Part 3

(This is the What NOT to Do part.)

...I made it to the top again. Dead tired, but on top. And probably faster than last time.

After taking the nifty panoramas, it was time to go back down. My brother told me it’s best not to run, but to stride, taking big steps each time and letting gravity work. He then showed me by striding down to the bottom. It looked like a good idea. (He’s the runner, of course.)

I also thought something else was a good idea: taking photos while I strode down the dune. I steadied the camera (Nikon D80 with a 17-55mm Nikkor lens on it) vertically in both hands, took the first big step, and let gravity work its magic while I snapped blurry picture after blurry picture. (With some crisp ones!)

Just for fun, let’s figure out how fast I was going. The figures are estimates, of course (I didn’t record EVERYTHING about the experience, and it’s by no means a frictionless descent), but it still should give a good idea of how fast I would be going by the time I got to the bottom:

[You can click on it to make it bigger.]

Take the sine, divide by 5.86, multiply by 32.2, ignore resistance due to sand because I’m not that good, and...

What??! 901 miles an hour?! That can’t be right! I must have done something wrong... Oh, right! I can’t use t=d/v to find the amount of time it took to get to the bottom. It’s not a constant velocity! Duh!

Okay, try again.



There! That’s more realistic, given that I ignored air and sand resistance. I would have been going 124.3 ft/s, or 85 mph, at the bottom of the hill.

Notice the verb tense, though: “would have been going.” Conditional perfect progressive tense. Conditional on the assumptions that 1) I am superhuman and 2) I made it to the bottom without stopping.

Those, of course, are flawed assumptions. ...There’s still doubt on the first one, but the second one is definitely false. Let me tell you why.

As I continued down the dune, I got steadier and more confident in my ability to not fall or drop my camera. So, I took my left hand off the camera and started to do the “swimming” motion you could do to help maximize your effort in going downhill. I didn’t have my other arm to match with it, though, so it started out like the normal pumping that runners do in flat-ground running.

My brother, looking up from the bottom, later said it looked like I was a frickin’ madman (especially the swimming part), and I have to admit, it felt like that at first. Eventually, though, I got it to look less ridiculous, and before I knew it I had my left arm doing the swimming motion normally. I kept my right hand (with the camera) in front of me, still taking shots of the ever-nearing shore, and I started to envision, nay dream deliriously of my triumphant run past my brother and through the beach and onto (not in, onto!) the water.

But that’s just like a wide receiver seeing the touchdown before he drops the catch in the end zone. Three-quarters of the way down, the most nefarious property of sand reared its ugly head: the aforementioned “Your feet also get buried a little bit” Tripping Property.

The front of my right foot dug in a bit too deep at the end of a stride. My left foot carried forward, but when my right foot tried to do the same thing the dune said, “Not today!” The swimming motion turned back into a flailing motion, and in the next instant I fell face-first into the sand.

Fortunately, sand also has the property of giving, so in a great act of charity it didn’t act like asphalt when I fell face-first. Unfortunately, I didn’t really fall face-first. I fell camera-first.

Lens-first, really.


::slight breeze as I open my eyes and look out at the desolation::

I spat out some of the sand in my mouth, saw the camera with the buried lens attached lying down in front of me, and immediately thought, “Before I get up, let’s take a picture. I know it’s ridiculous, but it’s just so I can remember the humiliation and maybe not do it again.” I aimed it towards me, and to my everlasting joy it took, so the photo served as an affirmative test of whether the camera still worked.

I heard my brother in the distance. He was laughing, of course. I realized for the first time that the whole charade probably looked hilarious. After I pictured it in my head, I started laughing, too. Through the sand, of course.

I spent the rest of the day spitting sand out of my mouth, shaking sand out of my hair, emptying sand out of my pockets, and hoping that I didn’t have to drop too much money out of my account to pay for repairs. Fortunately, sand only got into the zoom mechanism of the lens, making it harder to zoom in & out but still enabling me to take pictures. There was no sand in the body or in the actual lens, and the fall didn’t cause any damage.

I sent in the lens last Tuesday to be cleaned for $78.50. It should be good as new soon. Until then, I promise never to run downhill uncontrollably while taking pictures. And I’ll never (NEVER!) again underestimate the downhill of Tower Hill.

Or, you know, the uphill. There’s no shame in walking it.

P.S.: Please, someone check my math on that speed problem. Challenge my assumptions, redo the calculations, or even add in air & sand resistance if you want. (It’s been three semesters since Calculus II and three YEARS since Physics. I’m a bit rusty.) If you can be the first to find a realistic answer, I’ll give you a cookie. Seriously.