In an effort to continually minimize the distance walking between two points in Hoboken, a local student has taken advantage of his ability to phase through buildings to reduce distance. Due to the grid layout of Hoboken, most trips between two points are like walking along the two legs of a right triangle. Sometimes parks and (more dangerously) traffic intersections can be crossed diagonally to effectively traverse the hypotenuse of the triangle for a short time, but mostly, there are only two axes along which one can travel. As such, the field of walk-optimization has sprung up with the goal of finding the shortest, most-optimal path between two points. Experts in the field, like the author, risk life and limb to cross intersections with cars waiting in all directions, and know which side of a tree to walk around to save fractions of a second.
The student in question discovered last week that he had the ability to walk through solid buildings. This is of course a complete game-changer for the entire walk-optimization industry as it means that city blocks with no parks can now be crossed diagonally. No longer must one now walk from the classrooms on 6th Street all the way to 8th Street before turning left towards their apartment. Now, they can simply pass through all the apartment buildings in their way. No longer must they wait for cars on Washington Street, rather, they walk right through the passing cars, laughing to themselves at everyone waiting for the crosswalk.
The author asked this student to demonstrate the power during a scholarly meeting, where the two were discussing the feasibility of getting permission from lots of ground-floor apartments to use their entrances to courtyards so blocks could be crossed diagonally. It was at this point that the student stood up and walked through the table. The author’s monocle nearly fell off in surprise and he had to quickly re-twirl his handlebar mustache, lest anyone see it in a rather shaggy state. Setting aside the obvious upcoming Nobel Prize in physics, the implications for the walk-optimization community were staggering.
Immediately, the author took up his old-timey pen and unfurled a sheet of parchment. “In an effort to continually minimize the distance walking between two points,” he began, but then put the parchment aside for a while to be finished later.
The author is always seeking to inform the masses about the nature of walk-optimization. It must first be understood that the act of turning 90 degrees to walk east or west is a “zig” and turning to walk north or south is a “zag.” Any turn to the diagonal, including through a park, is a “zog.” The goal is to have as much distance traversed on a zog as possible. Legally, the author cannot encourage you to cross intersections illegally, but for many of the traffic signals on Washington Street, for the first 10 seconds that red hand sign is up, cars are stopped in all directions which is enough time to get across diagonally… if one were to choose to do so. When walking to or from campus, one should take the least steep hill while still heading in the right direction to take advantage of the smoothest vertical hypotenuse as well. When walk signals turn green, if you’re not the first person to reach the middle of the road, you’re probably walking too slowly. Always say hi to dogs you walk by. Stopping to pet dogs is considered optimal.
