jumpingfish

After some grueling paddling into fierce winds, we finally found calm waters in the lea of the trees and cattails lining the northern and western shores of Lake Walter E. Long. 

Kyle and Ry were in a new red canoe. Izzy and I were in our new red kayak. (The colors were coordinated almost perfectly.) And when we spotted a creek with ultra-calm waters, we were all in agreement, because we were all tired out and ready for a rest.

“Now this is more like it,” I muttered only half under my breath. Izzy found the courage to climb back up on the slippery bow. And Kyle threw his anchor so that we could just hang out for a while.

We drank drinks and ate snacks. Izzy found Kyle’s watermelon particularly satisfying. We told little stories about our lives.

I told them about picking up blueprints at the printing department when I worked as a draftsman’s aide my senior year in high school. 

“Imagine,” Ry said. “A high school job that would actually look good on your resumé.” 

“I used to work with a man,” Kyle said. And then he briefly stopped, motioning towards me. “In fact, he reminds me of you,” he said.

“Oh no,” I thought.

“All he did was smoke.”

What!? All this guy did was smoke and he reminds you of me!?

“He never ate. And I never saw him drink a thing.” Then he turned to Ry. “Just like David. He only drinks coffee. I never see him drink water.”

In the morning. I only drink coffee in the morning. …Ok, ok. I’m busted. At least Trudy wasn’t there, so she’ll never find out about this, because if she did, there would be much finger waging. 

She’ll never find out, right?

“Have you seen my table?” Trudy shouted across the street? She was eager to show off her husband’s (rare) handiwork.

Bill walked over and stood in the shade of the Lacy Oak. “Wow… He’s… he’s…” Then was silent, holding his chin and looking down at the ground.

“He’s what?” Trudy asked. I cringed at what might follow.

Bill held up his hand with his index finger pointing upward. “Who is the guy who painted the Sistine Chapel?” he asked.

Trudy laughed. “Michalangelo,” she said.

“That’s it!” he said. “He’s Michelangelo.”

I turned to look at my creation: an over-varnished steel wire spool converted into a crude table. I ran my hand along the top of it, getting a sliver in the process.

I’ve been to Rome. I’ve sat on the benches along the walls and strained my neck looking up at those frescos. And of course I don’t need to tell you this, but a work of art this table is not. Cool looking, yes. Useful, maybe. But art!?

Let’s just say… it doesn’t have my initials on it.

The tomatoes and cucumbers are a lost cause. The rain has stopped them from blossoming, and the hot heat of summer is just around the corner. Another year’s fail for the Trudy and David vegetable garden.

But look what else the rain did.

Click the pics!

1. At The Boat Ramp

“I saw something last weekend that really scared me,” he said the other day when we were at lunch.

I raised my eyebrows in a do tell way as I took another bite of BBQ sausage.

And so he told me this little story of how he saw a guy at the boat ramp launching his boat. As the guy backed his trailer towards the water, his truck started sliding.

“It was a small truck,” he said. “Something like a Jeep. And the boat was big.”

The truck started sliding, and the guy applied his breaks, but the boat kept pulling him down the ramp towards the water. All four tires were locked up, and the guy was turning his front wheels to try to get the truck to stop — to no avail.

Think what that guy must have been thinking.

It turned out well, though. When the trailer slid into the water, the sliding stopped, and the guy got out of his truck and launched his boat.

That was the end of the story.

2. End of the Day

I woke up last night at 2:00 am.

Bang! I’m awake with my eyes wide open.

As I slept, it struck me that the story wasn’t over.

“I realized something last night that really scared me,” I told him at lunch today.

“Oh?” he said.

And so I told him how there was more to the story about the guy with the Jeep and the boat. It was a holiday weekend, and so the guy was probably out on the lake for a long time. It would have been early evening when he got back to the ramp. 

“And it rained in the afternoon, remember?” I asked.

“It did,” he said.

So I pointed out that if the boat and the trailer were so heavy that they dragged the Jeep down the ramp earlier in the day, how on earth was that Jeep going to pull that boat up the ramp while it was raining?

His eyes widened, and he set his hamburger down.

“You’re right,” he said. “That is really scary.”

1. Son of a Theoretical Physicist

Books line the back wall of my study.

Morse and Feshbach; Poincaré; Jackson; Goldstein; Misner, Thorne and Wheeler; Courant and Hilbert; Margenau and Murphy; Abraham and Marsden. And others.

I am my father’s son. Many of those books were his. And more than a bit of my father’s theoretical physical nature runs in my veins. 

2. Fallen Branch 

We’ve known for some time that the neighbors’ Walnut tree was going to be a problem.

Many years ago, they cut back the branches overhanging their house and their power line, leaving the those hanging this way (although truth be told, at the time they probably did so out of deference to the then-owners of this house who might have enjoyed the tree).

Then a few years ago, twigs and small branches began dying and dropping into our yard and onto our roof — mostly small stuff. We had our tree guy cut back some dead branches when he was here.

Finally, the first sizable branch fell a few days ago. And wouldn’t you know it, it got hung up on our power line. The taut line seemed to be growning under the load but didn’t seem in jeopardy.

F = ma, as the saying goes. A little bit of dynamics. A little bit of statics. Theoretical physics of a sort — visible just outside our kitchen window.

3. Applied Physics at Work

Our tree guy had told us, “Once the branches start dying, the tree goes fast.”

So we talked to the neighbors about it. But that was a while ago. And now they were out of town. And that branch was on our power line. So I gathered my loppers and my saws and and went into the back yard.

I had a plan — a strategy based on my estimation of the relevant physics, my general expectations for the branch’s trajectory after I lightened its load. It was a good plan, because the branch would fall away from me. Which it did.

I know you expected me to say that the branch fell top of me. I am happy to report that it didn’t. It followed the trajectory I expected and fell away from the ladder, away from me. But here’s the thing of it.

When the branch hit the ground, it twisted. And when it twisted, a small sub-branch of it swung around. And when that sub-branch swung around, it clomped me on the shoulder. Hard. And I’m lucky it didn’t break my collar bone.

So you see, the problem here is this… I am indeed my father’s son. I have a theoretical approach to things. I understand Newton’s laws. I can work with Lagrangians and Hamiltonians. I can derive the Planetary Equations. I can tell you about the mathematics of the Earth’s gravity field. Hand-wavy, general principles, big-picture physics. 

It’s the nitty gritty that gets me. And that, my friends, is why I shun power tools. Because sadly, theoretical physics.