Ithaca is gorgeous

By well-known folk wisdom, the gorges are gorgeous:

Seriously scenic hiking.

 We came in search of a geocache, which we needed rock-climbing rope and headlamps to find. Advanced level only.

View across and down the gorge towards the lake.

 We did actually end up climbing down/across/into a gorge and walking along the bottom for a little bit.

The view upstream, bridge in sight.

Gorges aside, Ithaca is full of lovely sights.

Nice fluffy trees and brightly-painted angular metal sculptures.

Sweeping expanses of greenery sloping down towards the lake.

Lots and lots of trees precariously growing on ledges.

I enjoy the special features of Ithaca; things I've only noticed now that I have experienced their absence in the rest of the world. For example, this sign:

"No skiing, sledding, or sliding"

The variegated trees lining the highways as I drove were also very nice.

This post's theme word is campanile (n), "a bell tower, especially one detached from a main building such as a church." Sledding is expressly forbidden on the slopes below the campanile, but students frequently use food trays to careen down the snowy expanse anyway.

What is your quest?

I take attendance by having the students answer a question. This one pairs nicely with the previous question "What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?"

What is your quest?

Not the college-polished liberal arts answers I expected:

• i'm still waiting for the call to action tbh
• still figuring that out
• I don't know

Short-term thinkers and those with pretty feasible goals:

• sleep
• eat 2015's chocolate award winners
• not puke after watching a romcom
• to finish the current problem set
• to make it through the day
• over to the left a bit
• sort things
• to finally get to October break

Long-term and big picture thinkers:

• to find a nice farm to settle down in
• to find the meaning of my one and only life
• to sell vacuum cleaners in n cities, driving as few miles as possible
• find my quest
• to make myself and others happy
• to be the best there ever was
• seek ultimate fun in life
• join moon
• to get vim commands to work in google docs

I'm not sure that "join moon" should be interpreted literally. Maybe it's a cult thing?

There were some context-free superlatives:

• be the best
• to be the very best
• to be the best there ever was

This last one, it turns out, was a frequent verbatim response, sometimes extending for several more lines. I had to do an internet search to find my missing cultural context, because I am an old person and not hip or cool.

The obvious answers (I can hear it, with accent and cadence, in my head):

• to find the Holy Grail
• I don't know thaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa-----
  [ed. note: the line trailed off and upwards into the margin]

The "playing for brownie points" award goes to my favorite: "to reach node v of graph G".

This post's theme word is manumit, "to free from slavery." A valuable life's work is to maximally manumit.