Chelsea tractors; American Gods; Speed enforced by aircraft; A prisoner of the road; Xing Ped; Please Do Not Feed The Animals
Chelsea Tractors. This is the term in the UK for massive 4wd vehicles, typically Range Rovers, driven by tiny little women to take their cute children to a Montessori nursery. The most 4wd action these vehicles will ever see is the challenge of driving onto the thickly-painted DO NOT STOP HERE areas in order to wait for the children to climb aboard into their individualised car cocoon safety seats. We look at the huge pickups here – with two rows of seats in the air conditioned cabin area and a shiny unblemished painted flatbed that has never been used for anything more challenging than transporting a sleepover kit – and wonder if they are equivalent.
American Gods. We have both been reading this book by Neil Gaiman. “And he guessed he would take a roadside attraction, no matter how cheap, how crooked or how sad, over a shopping mall, any day.” That’s us.
Speed Enforced By Aircraft. Yes, this is seriously a sign by the side of the road. Enforced how? Maximum or minimum? Do they dive bomb you and waggle their wings? We need to know. Meanwhile we wallow onwards at BonkersMax speed and nuts to you Mr Aviator.
Speed limits: And while I’m thinking about speeds, in the UK we do speed limits in multiples of 10. 30mph for suburban roads, 60 for single-carriageway country roads, 70 for dual carriageways etc. In the US they are in multiples of 5: 25, 55 and 65 respectively. Maybe ending a speed limit in 5 gives a greater emphasis on accuracy. Not that it matters much in the JGG as the speedo needle swings merrily from side to side, and at the top end under-reads by between 5 and 15mph.
A prisoner of the road. It is difficult to stop when driving. When the driver has his gaze narrowed on the horizon and the car finally up to cruising velocity (or rather, speed, if you are familiar with the relationship between speed and velocity when you are considering the FCS’s cornering techniques) (the latest name suggestion is Approxi-mate) then cries to examine an information board or to turn into a viewpoint pullout or to investigate a splashy stream with easily-accessible beachlet or to refuel humans or cars can be easily ignored. All across the USA there are people who are prisoners of the road, some of them in station wagons.
Xing Ped. In the UK we paint words on the road so they can all be read at once from the air. Usually direction names on roundabout exits, they would say enigmatically “East So’ton” (an abbreviation which nobody in the UK has ever used for Southampton). In the US they paint phrases on the road to tell you about things like a pedestrian crossing, but they assume you will read one word at a time as you run over them. So we read notices about pedestrian crossing or traffic lights as Xing Ped, or Ahead Signal.
Please Do Not Feed The Animals. There are deer in Pacific Grove, hanging around people’s front gardens and eating the plants, much to the irritation of the gardeners. I thought I would take a charming photo of a group of them. A woman in a car called out “But have you seen THEM!” If you look carefully in the deer photo you can see three dogs in the pickup truck behind them. I went and took a close-up picture and the dogs paid no attention to me at all, they were entirely focused on their potential dinner. One each, I believe.