Highway 99 Travel by Garry Worger Garry Worger, 2008.

. All rights reserved Dear friends, I am presently on a leisurely trip throughout BC. I started at Dawson Creek, then drove south and west, using Highway 97, and branched onto Highway 99. Highway 99 was a fascinating cruise, with adventure, spectacular vistas, questionable roads, and mathematical quandaries galore. NOTE: For any who read this and find themselves challenged to construe some of my more esoteric verbiage, find someone who is an English guru to translate. On the other hand, should some of the mathematical concepts prove onerous, seek assistance from someone in the know, mathematically. Highway 99 starts (North end) somewhat north of Cache Creek, and ends somewhere south of Whistler. It starts out as a reasonably drivable road and lures one onwards towards Lillooet, like the slasher killer in a bad movie luring the clueless, yet pulchritudinous, heroine into the basement of the creepy house. Not that I am in any way whatsoever suggesting I am clueless or pulchritudinous. And Im not particularly interested in any related comments from my readers. So there I was, smug in my knowledge that Id found a relatively empty road, which ambled through the usual BC Super Natural mountain scenery: steep hills, tight corners, passing lanes every so often, rushing streams, well-thought-out bridges. I was content. I wheeled around a fairly tight corner on the road, and thought Id found the Grand Canyon. Not quite, but the suddenly appearing panorama of the Fraser River canyon is eye-catching; rugged, deep, multi-earth-toned and awe inspiring. I attach a picture or two to make my point. If I had been more diligent in reading the Sony video manual, I might even have some movie footage for you. (Should that be re-thought to movie centimetreage?)

Thus endeth my promise of spectacular vistas.

Soon after this exciting landscape, I crossed yet another well-engineered bridge and spent a rather boring night in beautiful downtown Lillooet. I would be remiss, however, not to mention the excellent leg of lamb served at Dinas Greek Restaurant in Lillooet. Since remission is not my strong point, I thus aver Dinas serves an excellent leg of lamb Late next morning, I (to continue with a metaphor) blithely skipped down the basement steps to the awaiting chainsaw To say the road deteriorated somewhat is like stating the present Burmese government is not overly concerned about its citizens. Perhaps I would have made my point more succinctly if Id said that deterioration dont hardly tell you what a hellacious road old 99 had morphed into. (I had some trouble with that previous sentence you may note it ended with a preposition, but it was too cumbersome to reconstruct. If I had, it would have read, Perhaps I would have made my point more succinctly if Id said that deterioration dont hardly tell you how old 99 had morphed into a thoroughly hellacious road.). I trust by now youve picked up on my subtle assessment of the piece of crap that was now called Highway 99? Why such a harsh judgement? Let me start with what is laughingly referred to as the surface of 99. Broken up pavement alternating with pit-run gravel, potholes of a size that would ingest many a Prius, undulating surfaces that would serve as a blueprint for a new roller coaster, steep grades (this is the mathematical quandary part but youll have to wait a bit), and bridges designed by a drop-out Civil Engineering Technologist whose present employ is the cultivation and frequent inhaling of BCs largest cash crop. (And no, Gwendolyn, forest products are NOT that crop.) The bridges were one lane wooden-topped structures that were entered via Scurves which inevitable required a 900 turn to enter and another to exit the bridge. Doing their utmost to destroy these masterpieces of Lower Elbonian engineering were raging streams of muddy water, lapping and gnawing at the bridge supports like the demented killers dog which has trapped the heroine wait a minute, Ill let this allusion go for the rest of this little travelogue. Now for the real fun part! Many of the twisting, off kilter, tipping toward the nearest chasm hills had 15% inclines. Aha, I said to myself, as my brakes got more and more spongy

from my incessant stamping thereof. This would be a great Trigonometry problem for mathematics students. And I started to construct the solution in my mind, which was a lot less scary than trying to keep my van from careening down those 15% inclines. A 15% incline is really a slope wherein the rise (y coordinate) is 15, and the run (x coordinate) is 100. Thus I have a ratio of 15/100. Using my handy dandy mnemonic for making sense of Trigonometric Functions (SohCahToa), I realized I had, NOT y/x, but rather o/a, which meant that I needed to consider that most dreaded of all Trigonometric Phenomena the Tangent! Using another mnemonic (all this going on in my head whilst I actually negotiated these bloody precipitous inclines), namely Name(angle) = number (an incantation that allows one to actually perform the mathematics of trigonometry), I found that a. I had the Name TANGENT b. I had the number (15/100 or .15 the mathematically inept can get help with this intellectual leap by contacting a college mathematics department.) c. BUT THE ANGLE was missing! Which means (yet another cerebral bound) that I would have to use the perverse function, and not just the Tangent itself. Once I had finished the drive which got boringly normal after I reached Pemberton, I stopped for lunch, turned on my laptop, opened my Excel software and solved the problem the angle the hill made with the earth surface was 17 degrees, more or less. And thus ended my trip along Highway 99. Sincerely, Garry Worger Ps OOPS! I should have said inverse function, not perverse function. Everyone knows that the perverse function refers to calculating and filing annual tax returns. Pps.. Was anyone sufficiently anal to check out my calculations? ACTUALLY, the correct answer is of that I calculated earlier.