Biking through a major Florida city, it is striking how different it is to experience the landscape by bike than by driving. Highway interchanges that seem like nothing more from above than a series of lane-changes to follow signs turn out to be a strange labrynth of MUPs, sidewalks, local streets, and commercial and industrial buildings below. At ground level, overpasses are huge roof structures suspended on massive columns; good for shade or shelter from the rain, albeit noisy. The waste of space is striking, but it stimulates the imagination for what could be done with that space. Obviously someone imagined a MUP or it wouldn't be there today. Perhaps the land around the MUP could be filled in with a nursery of potted trees, to be planted around the city as they grow.

When you zoom in to the level of the pixels on a computer screen, the pixels are nothing more than solid colored squares in whatever selection of colors the monitor is set to display. Nature is different. Each pixel turns out to itself be pixelated with countless organic forms and structures that make it up. Microscopes don't do justice to this phenomenon because you can't be physically present at the scale of a microscope, let alone move through the landscapes in three dimensions. To experience a smaller scale of reality directly, you have to slow down. Sometimes what you see is not pretty. Biking on a highway may reveal that the pavement is rougher than you could ever imagine from inside a speeding car. On the other hand, you may experience vantage points, objects, and landscapes in a way you didn't realize exist from the familiar perspective of a motor vehicle. Either way, the experience is different - it's another dimension!