Wednesday 3/31

Tumbleweed

Every once in a while I see or experience something that reminds me of where I live.   Texas . . .  Fort Worth, in particular, which is where the West begins.  (Dallas is where the East ends, by the way.  Who knows what all that stuff in between is. . .) Well, I was idling at a traffic stop in broad daylight one day when a tumbleweed blew by.  I couldn’t decide if it was a western icon to proud of and marveled at, or if I was watching the butt end of a million jokes roll across my path.

When I think of a tumbleweed, I think barren wasteland, desolation, desert, lonesomeness, cowboy showdowns, good, bad, and ugly.  But when this tumbleweed tumbled, there were no barbed wire fences, boot spurs, or saloons in sight.  Just a gas station, a fast food restaurant, and hybrid cars.  I couldn’t help but laugh to myself.  A tumbleweed. 

A wandering tumbleweed is often a way to punctuate a bad joke or an awkward silence in a movie.  It can be used to symbolize the untamed frontier as well as to poke fun at it.  A tumbleweed spotting is in most cases, a comically random event.  Where do tumbleweeds even come from?

The answer is: lots of places.  Tumbleweed is a behavior, not a specific plant.  Many different types of vegetation can have this effect.  The above-ground part of a plant simply dries up, snaps off and blows away with the next passing breeze.  The “weed,” if you will, gets herded around by the wind and eventually forms a ball shape.  Sometimes they get caught on fences, buildings, and hobos, but for the most part, they just keep on rolling wherever the wind takes them.  So where do they all end up?

Is there a great tumbleweed deposit where the wind stops?  You’d think if they just kept on blowing, they would end up on the coast.  Well, I’ve seen pictures of beaches and I don’t see any tumbleweeds!  I thought maybe they get caught amongst the trees in a forest somewhere, but that doesn’t make sense because there would be a great wall of tumbleweed on one side.  I’ve never seen that either! 

The sobering truth is, a tumbleweed’s journey is probably most often squelched by a rainstorm or by tumbling into a body of water and sinking to the bottom.  I refuse to believe they all end that way, so there must be some mysteriously disappearing survivors out there somewhere.  So take delight in the rare sight of these marvels, for sadly, they are seen by thousands and remembered by none.

By: S. Cole Garrett

Tuesday 3/30

Water Tower

Whenever you’re on a mid-west road trip, there’s one sure fire way to know you reach a new town.  No matter how big or small the towns, they almost all have water towers.  Some towers are massive feats of engineering, rising aplomb where civilization thirsts.  Others seem like little more than a few gallons perched on sticks in the middle of nowhere.  Many of them are adorned with local high school mascots.  One tower in nearby me even hails the ‘fighting farmers.’  (No joke, that’s really a high school mascot.)  I’m fairly certain we all know what a water tower is, but what are they?  What do they do?

I bet some of you are asking, “who cares?”  Well, someone asked me and I happened to have the answer for them.  I realized I would be happy if I could save at least one more person the embarrassment of having to ask the question.  The answer is: fish.  They are built to house endangered marine wildlife.

…very endangered marine wildlife.

Just kidding.  The obvious answer is that they hold water.  This is true, but it isn’t the main purpose of water towers.  It seems like there wouldn’t be enough water in one tower to shower a whole town every day (even the towns where not everyone takes a shower every day . . . ew).  The main reason towns have towers is to create water pressure.

Think about it.  When your electricity goes out, the water still runs, right?  Sure it does.  That’s because somewhere, that water is being ‘pushed’ through the pipes.  It’s kind of like your toilet.  The water in the tank is held at a level above the bowl so that when you pull the lever, the water falls down (and swirls, but that’s a whole other discussion).  Keyword: gravity.  Water towers hold enormous amounts of water to provide what’s called hydrostatic pressure to push water through pipes, using gravity. 

So why are they raised?  For residential prowess and pride?  No.  (That would be too easy to make fun of!)  It’s more physics than is worth explaining, but it’s the same concept as siphoning.  The water source (the water tower) works better if it is at a higher elevation than the destination (all of the plumbing in your house).

Now, if someone asks you why we have water towers, you have two options.  You could tell them what you now know, that they are for water pressure.  Or you could intentionally lead them astray down the ignorance-paved path.  Tell them it’s a cheaper way for tiny towns to advertise than billboards and then laugh when they tell the next sucker!

By: S. Cole Garrett

Monday 3/29

Yellow

To go, or not to go?  Isn’t that the split-second decision at almost every yellow traffic light?  Not many people like being forced to make decisions, especially quick ones, but it happens to people every day!  You approach an intersection and the traffic signal turns yellow.  You really only have tow choices: stop or coast through (speed through, for some of us).  Seems pretty basic, right?  There is something peculiar about yellow lights, however.  Intuitively, the more driving experience one has, the easier the decision should be to make.  It’s actually quite the opposite.

It seems like no matter how long you’ve been driving, a yellow light still has the potential to make you slam on your brakes of gun it through the intersection in frustration (or victory, depending on the person).  There are several factors that need to be adequately judged when confronted with the yellow signal.  Beginner drivers only know two things to think about: speed and distance remaining.  With practice, judging when you should go and when you should stop becomes easier.  There are times to “definitely go” and times to “definitely stop.”  But there are points where you would “probably go” and “probably stop.”  There’s also “not-sure-if-I-should-go-or-stop.”  The closer the two decisions get, the blurrier the decision.

Other variables muck up your decision-making process, though, and they stack up fast!  For example, are you towing anything?  Do you have kids in the car?  Are you familiar with how long the yellow light is (because let’s face it, some are annoyingly much longer than others)?  Is there a camera at the intersection?  Do you feel lucky?  Well, do ya?  All of these factors make the decision much more complicated.  A camera-monitored intersection (that is, if you know which ones are) probably sways more of your decisions to ‘stop.’  Same thing with toting kids or if you know it’s a short light.  If you’re towing a trailer, you might be more inclined to go.  Well, what if you’re towing a trailer and you have a car-full of kiddos and the intersection has a quick yellow and it’s monitored . . . and it turns yellow on you?  See?  Your brain thinks about this every time.

(The worst is when you’ve made up your mind and it happens to be on the riskier side of ‘go’ and all of a sudden you spot a police officer.  You can either freak out and slam on the brakes and get his attention or speed through and hope you don’t get his attention.)

Yellow lights essentially invoke you to make a bunch of decisions all at the same time.  Beginners don’t know to think about as many and so as it turns out, it’s a little easier.  Experienced drivers, on the other hand, have tons of yellows under their belt, but their brain goes through a lot more steps to get a decision.

You’re still going to get caught off guard sometimes by yellow.  It’s in their nature.  You can even have a bunch of general rules-of-thumb for every factor.  The problem is: you run out of thumbs pretty quickly!

By: S. Cole Garrett