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As if anyone could give a shit, 91st Place doesn't refer to my finish in some recent (unspecified) competition, although that's very plausible. It refers instead to the street in Elmhurst, NY where I grew up. When I thought (deeply, deeply) about what to name this blog, I considered first that I would love to have a cool title like Skull Bolt or Tinfoil Viking Science, but I was sidetracked by a wave of nostalgia and downloaded the free version of Google Earth to see if I could locate my old house. My memory of 91st Place was that it was two blocks long, running more or less north-south from Corona Avenue to 50th Avenue. Google Earth found my street, and apparently there is still a house where mine was, although it's impossible to tell if it's the same one I grew up in. Strangely, however, the marker for my address, 48-30, was assigned to another house near the other end of my block. Since I know very well where my house was (third up from 50th Avenue, on the west side of the street), and I could confirm its location based on the size, shape, and relative configuration of the buildings around it, I can only conclude that the addresses on the street have been re-assigned since my childhood. Nevertheless, I was wrong about one detail; 91st Place is actually three blocks long, continuing past Corona Avenue for one more block up to 43rd. Of course I remembered that segment, which is mostly a bridge that crosses over a railroad track, very well, just not that it was an extension of the same street. Of course if you're not me, and most people aren't, this post has now become an excursion into a veritable Dead Zone of extreme boredom, that is if anyone has been reading it at all, which I rather doubt. Conclusion: Google Earth is a great tool for nostalgia trips if you happen to have lived on the minuscule fraction of the planet's surface that's been mapped in detail within the program. Otherwise it's merely an excellent geographical search tool. If you haven't tried it yet, consider this a favorable product review.