This report brought to you by Valor of the Lake Alarms
It is Friday… glorious, end-of-the week, Friday. Just a few more hours of pain therapy before freedom… sweet freedom! The goal is in sight… don’t lose focus… keep your Bering Strait!
Words about roads today seem sort of roadiculously absurd… there’s just not much to report. In fact… I am considering taking this daily column in sort of a new direction, at least during the summer months. I plan to make little—or no!—mention of road conditions, with exceptions being made ONLY when there’s actually something of note to be wrote by this ol’ goat to quote… as remote as the rote might be to float. (Let me save you some trouble: the last few words really made little sense, but the whole rhyming rhythm just sort of took me off on a tangent.) Oh, I’ll still write a lil’ sump’n sump’n every weekday, but I’ll skip the “road report” thing in this column, until such time that it becomes a matter of frequently changing conditions (I’m taking about winter, of course). Sure, I’ll make note of conditions that COULD arise, but only WHEN they arise: rockslides, accidents, fires, detours, whatever… but for now, until the weather goes all inclementateous on us again, let’s just ASSUME—unless mentioned otherwise—that road conditions are great, with no rain, no snow, no ice, no emus (at least, FEW of them), no wind, no checkpoints (DUI, Charlie, or other), no bridges washed out Timmy, no Timmy fell down the well, no trees down, no open fault lines (even though we DO cross the San Andreas fault line every time we take Hwy 18 to San Bernardino… right near Sierra), no fog, no meteors, no worries. Deal? Speak now or forever hold your peace… anybody? No? Bueller? Bueller? Bueller? Bueller? Okay… the ayes have it, two to one over the nos… DONE!
Did Juneau that today is National Alaska day? We should all-ask-a friend to state what they think it’s about. Yukon ask somebody who maybe has a Kenai for these kinds of things, or just Barrow the encyclopedia to learn how to celebrate. Wait! Let’s just polar audience… somebody must have Nome about this!
It’s also National Logistics day. Now, I’ll share a little secret with y’all (Yep, it’s STILL a little secret, since we’ve only got eight readers, and four of those are my own different online personas): I wear different hats, and as you may have guessed, I have a day job… one that defines me as a “Logistics Manager.” That’s my main gig… logistics. But, until looking online today, I had no idea that logistics has its own day to celebrate! Hell… the DAY even has its own website, although I’m not too sure it’s accurate. One of the first things I read on that page was that I should scroll down to read “interesting facts” about logistics… but I’m afraid that just can’t be possible. It’s a pretty boring field, I must confess.
Now, the word “logistics” is defined as the management of operation details, start to finish, but every participant in the freight delivery process is part of logistics. For those of you still awake butwondering exactly WHAT that all means: logistics is a broad term, which basically covers every aspect of freight transport. From the initial work done by the person who accepts customer orders (hopefully applying logic to the process thereof) and sends them into transit (via UPS or FedEx, or by rail or plane), to the guy who finally punts the box from the delivery van through your front window glass, all are part of the logistics field.
Hot. Smokin’… DAMN! I just realized that this stuff is even more boring than I previously realized! Enough of this I say. Be gone, boringness and drivelation!
Now, all readers who STILL remain, please consider cutting back on your coffee consumption… maybe even try sneaking in a cup of decaf every third or fourth refill. It is evident to me that you must have some sort of caffeine overconsumption issues if you are still hanging in with this column today.
Okay… so on to EXCITING things! Today is also… drum roll please… wait for it…. Here… it… comes… NATIONAL INSURANCE AWARENESS DAY!!! Today, we are encouraged to review our policies and coverage details, and make changes or adjustments as needed. It’s a day to “read the fine print,” and to… CRAP! We’re still doing boring?!? What is happening here? Dang it! I am so sorry, readers… or, maybe reader? Maybe that’s even optimistic…
Okay, let’s try… the weekend: it’s almost here. And the WEEKEND will bring us National Meteor Watch Day. Me, I’m going to strap a steak to my wrist and tell people it’s a meatier watch. When they do that thing people always do to me, where they raise their eyebrows as though they aren’t sure if I’m super funny or just a little touched instead, I may say it’s because of my fear of travel… you know, my car nervousness nature.
On National Meteor Watch Day, we are encouraged to go out at night (yes… celebrate the day at night… whatever), and watch meteors streak through the sky…. shooting stars. These are small (usually!) bits and pieces of rock and metal that have been cruising through space, just minding their own biz, until they collide with Earth’s atmosphere. When THAT happens, the friction produced by moving through air at unbelievably high speeds (measured in MPFS: Miles Per Freakin’ Second) causes these pieces of stone and metal to light up, bright and hot, just before their destruction.
Would you believe that the majority of the ones we see lighting up the sky are fragments smaller than an almond? We’re seeing them as they enter the atmosphere, typically igniting 40 to 75 miles from our vantage point. Also, the vast majority of them will disintegrate, or burn up, within moments… only a very rare few will ever hit the ground as objects bigger than dust.
However… NOTHING ever simply vanishes without a trace. Those meteors that burn up, still leave something, which is generally dusty, metal ash… which floats to Earth, never to be noticed again. UNLESS… unless you grab a magnet and drag it through the dirt. (As a certified drag king, I advise placing your magnet inside a Baggie, in order to keep the magnet clean, and to make separation from the collected material a LOT easier.) After a few minutes of dirt dragging, you’ll notice little black flakes of metal gathering on your magnet… and many believe that the majority of this is actually “space dust”! Really… it’s what’s left of the billions of meteors that have entered our atmosphere and did not survive entry intact. To be clear, however, this claim is debatable. Some scientists agree that these metallic particles are MOSTLY space dust, but others point out that there are many terrestrial sources that might produce these particles. You can save this stuff in a small container… you might even be able to Ketchikan full of the dust.
One thing that all of those smart, lab-coat wrapped astroscientist guys agree upon, is that Dungeons and Dragons was awesome (and maybe still is), that Mom’s basement IS considered “living on your own,” and that eventually they’d all like to go on a date with a real girl sometime (although a few do still find girls “icky”). They also agree that if you find little particles that are spherical, it is very likely that they may be “micrometeorites.” These are survivors… intact pieces of something actually from outer space. Of course, if you are dirt dragging in places where humans may have produced metallic waste, like say, near a BB gun target range, your “micrometeorites” are less likely to be the real thing… but you knew that.
Enjoy the weekend… maybe even do that space dust hunting thing. But don’t be an Iditarod… may I suggest hiring the Magnet King of Chicago… Ferrous Bueller?!?