in an attempt to generalize beyond solvable methods of analysis for last passage percolation, recently eric cator (radboud university, nijmegen) and i have started analyzing the piecewise linearity of the last passage model. the tools we use to this point are purely geometric, but have the potential advantage that they can be used for very general choices of random inputs. i will describe the very pretty geometry of the last passage model, our work in progress to use it to produce probabilistic information, and some connections to algebraic geometry.