Wednesday, January 02, 2013

The “Inversional Flu”

Once again folks, an inversion has set in over the valley and I’m feeling the effects of it.  Mild flu-like symptoms; headache, joint ache and, well, aches all over the body.

It’s supposed to break up early next week, as the temperatures head up to the high 20’s.  Yeah.  Until then I just need to drink a lot of water and bring my Advil everywhere.  But on the good side, inversions do make for spectacular sunsets.

Talking about headaches, I’m glad no one was in the left turn lane when this signal light fell down.  I got this picture on the way home from school today, there was a police officer in the middle of the intersection directing traffic just like in the old days.

And finally, confirmed: The Jeep definitely has positraction.

For those of you who don’t know what positraction is, I will defer to Marisa Tomei in the movie “My Cousin Vinnie”

Mona Lisa Vito: The car that made these two, equal-length tire marks had positraction. You can't make those marks without positraction, which was not available on the '64 Buick Skylark!
Vinny Gambini: And why not? What is positraction?
Mona Lisa Vito: It's a limited slip differential which distributes power equally to both the right and left tires. The '64 Skylark had a regular differential, which, anyone who's been stuck in the mud in Alabama knows, you step on the gas, one tire spins, the other tire does nothing.
[the jury members nod, with murmurs of "yes," "that's right," etc]

So I tried it out on a snowy parking lot.  All I had to do was spin my tires as I backed out of a parking spot, and then get out and see if I made one or two spin tracks in the snow.

As you can see, the Jeep made two slick tracks where both tires spun as I backed out.

3 comments:

Lisa Shafer said...

You get sick during inversions? Or is it just the cold that's bugging you? Do you ache on extremely cold sunny days as well?
My teeth ache -- and the side of my jaw where the surgery was aches now in the cold.

Lisa Shafer said...

Of course, heat makes me get migraines, so I'll still take the teeth-aching cold over a migraine.

Max Sartin said...

Nah, it's not just the cold, clear sunny cold days don't effect me like this.