“I call our world Flatland, not because we call it so, but to make its nature clearer to you, my happy readers, who are privileged to live in Space.”
Edwin Abbott Abbott
Before I leave home, I check wind speed and direction. I then select a route based on my findings.
Stepping out the door, I find the wind seems mostly out of the south at 10 mph, though after the ride, Klimat, the weather app tied into Strava, claims that, no, the wind was south-southeast.
Left to my own decisioning, I would coast down Santa Fe Road and up Hallock Hollow. A bit hilly, but always doable. Trees along the way do a good job of knocking down the wind.
But my compatriot decides a flat ride is more desirable than a hilly one, and anyway, hadn’t we ridden Hallock Hollow just the other day?
Why yes, yes we had.
So we head toward Edelstein and Flatland, the domain that Edwin Abbott Abbott so winningly described in 1884. The land that leads its inhabitants to disbelieve in a third dimension and begin to think of their own height above the ground as nothing more than a localized aberration.
Flat land. Flatland.
Flatland is unrelenting. Unending. Incapable of surprising the traveler. Everything it is, is everything you see. The horizon cannot contain it or promise any visual relief. It is what it is, and it is deadly, deadly dull.
Then we pass a barn, the world of three dimensions pops back into being, and all is good and right with the world.
Except for the wind we could have avoided. Abbott didn’t warn us of the wind.
Some things we have to experience for ourselves, I guess.
April 13, 19.6 miles.
16incheswestofpeoria 
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