Travel Reference
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seat with me to Mr. Brico. But the vision of myself walking around the store looking for a
salesman while carrying my decrepit, discolored toilet seat under my arm surpassed even
my own admittedly high embarrassment threshold.
So, I took careful measurements of the width and depth of the bolt holes, as well as the
length and breadth of the seat itself. After measuring almost a dozen seats at the store that
looked about right, I still couldn't find anything that matched precisely. But I figured that
as long as the bolt holes were spaced correctly, any other variance wouldn't pose a major
problem. Sure enough, after squirming around on my back with a wrench for about a half-
hour, I managed to get the old seat off and put the new seat on. It was almost right: the
inner curve of the seat at its widest point was broader than our bowl, so about a half-inch of
porcelain was visible below. The front had a bit of an overhang where it didn't follow the
curve, but that mattered even less. Given my low standards of acceptability in all matters
of household maintenance, and inspired by my former President, I was able to pat myself
on the back and say, “Mission accomplished!”
***
In the aftermath I've had occasion in quiet moments to ponder the mysteries of toilet seat
curvatures. I realized that to get things really right, you would need to specify the various
algorithms that describe the curves of the seat. Since I only got as far as trigonometry in
high school, the task was simply beyond my talents. But I consoled myself when I thought
about the problems that the Florentines had in reconstructing one of the bridges over the
Arno river that the Nazis had blown up just before abandoning the city.
Ponte Santa Trinita is the bridge just downstream from the Ponte Vecchio that connects Via
Maggio with Via Tornabuoni. It's the bridge with the statues of the four seasons, one on
each corner. If you stand at the Ponte Vecchio and look across at the curvatures of the ma-
sonry that supports the Santa Trinita bridge, you'll see that the curve is not a simple oval
and that the degree of curvature increases dramatically at both ends of the arc. The com-
plexity of the curve caused Florentine engineers considerable consternation as they tried to
reconstruct the bridge from photographs. There was not another instance to be found any-
where of an arch with the same form.
In the course of researching the curve someone eventually stumbled upon a match. It seems
that the exact same curve was used by Michelangelo in his tomb for Giuliano de' Medici.
The curvature of the top of the pedestals on which the figures of Day and Night sit at the
feet of Giuliano is identical to curve of the arches under the Ponte Santa Trinita. Reasoning
backwards, art historians could now make the argument that Michelangelo was probably
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