jumpingfish

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.

1. What’s the purpose?

“What’s the purpose?” I sometimes hear that guy in my head ask. “Why post those doggerel-worthy drawings of yours?”

Aside from the fact that the question makes me feel ashamed, he does have a point. Just what is their purpose — especially since some of them are so lousy?

Here’s how I look at it: these are just sketches about which I make no claims other they the fact that I sketched them, and I often spent shockingly (and obviously) little time at it.

I tell the guy, “A man can doodle; skip ‘em if you don’t like ‘em.”

2. Pushing me aside

Yet, often my sketches do have a purpose.

I remember a time when I was new on a development team and I walked up to one of the old hands and asked him a question. He didn’t quite understand and muttered something about needing to draw it out, at which point I (almost in glee) dashed back to my desk to retrieve my notebook with a sketch. 

When I sat back down, he seemed to be ignoring me, which was confusing.

“Here, I’ve got it drawn here,” I said, but he turned away from me, continuing to try to sketch on his own.

He didn’t want to see my circles and arrows. I felt invisible.

3. Fancy pipes

There was another time, when I shared a diagram to different effect.

A friend, with whom I hadn’t worked for a while came to my cubicle and asked if we could talk. We had a mini design meeting in which, among other things, I stood up at a pad of paper on an easel that just happened to be next to us and drew a diagram. There were boxes and arrows and little file-shaped shapes and my rendering of a sitting person stick figure. 

“I miss your diagrams,” he said.

“Oh,” I said, “you should see my new way of drawing pipes!” And I showed him.

He laughed. 

Was that a picture of graduation day you sent? I don’t think it’s a stretch to assume so. What a fine thing.

Congratulations to the grad. And to the parents, too! What a fine thing.

Miss Izzy and I went out tonite to walk under the clear night sky. The sickle of the Big Dipper hung over us, and a waxing gibbous moon meeting up with Jupiter. And there was a Nighthawk sweeping thru the air high above the parking lot lights.

She and I slowly made our way to the soccer fields, around the gravel elementary school track and around the middle school track that they resurfaced last fall and is so spongey to walk on. Izzy found many excuses to take many detours.

Miss Izzy, does Mr. Guinness tell you about his running days, when he and I would go out to the lake? Does he tell you these things as he raises his head from his slumber when you get back from a long walk like this? Does he whisper his stories into your ears when he greets you?

He was a fine running buddy. Although perpetually distracted by everything at walking speed, when we would start running, his ears would lie back against his head, and he would run faithfully beside me, barely flinching at the other dogs and runners we passed. Does he tell you that? Does he tell you about how he would go for five miles with me and how one time he ran the seven mile loop?

Oh, those were the days, Miss Izzy, when he and I would go out there for a run around the lake and make this long walk of ours look like the child’s play that it is. I think we could do better than this, Miss Izzy — for Mr. Guinness’s sake. Ask him; see what he thinks.