Tuesday 10 November 2009

Monday 9th November 2009 - Finding out About Post Offices

          "10-12% Gradient next 3 1/2 miles" the sign said.  And when I got to Tyrone, by ears actually popped.  I think I'm on US220, when it suddenly ripes its mask away and confesses to being Interstate 99.  Dulcie has triumphed again.  I'm going North-East to Bellefonte (I think of the black actor, but they appear to say "Bell-font"), where I will find the home of the American Philatelic Society.  I'm hoping their library is not just about stamps.  I'm hoping I can find a little about Post Office History as well.
          The scenery is spectacular.  We're sweeping out of the Alleghenies and into (I think) the Susquehanna River system, which ends up in Chesapeake Bay, which looks like it's in Maryland.  So little has been happening lately I'm getting interested in the scenery.
          But in the end I'm distracted by something more interesting: a (quite common) sign which says "Bridge may be icy": a modal verb; very sophisticated; treates us like grown-ups.  I wonder how the European system of graphic representations manages that?  Perhaps a picture of a bridge and an exclamation mark?  Anyway, pondering on nonsense like that caused me to miss the sheriff parked up in a gully.  "I may be going too fast", I thought,and had a few miles to worry about that.
 
         I've been worrying a bit about one of the tires looking a bit soft.  If it's only slight, one way to check is by feeling the temperature after a long run and comparing it with the others.  When I get to the motel at Bellefonte, I decide to do just that.  And, blow me down, one of the others is completely flat: not soft, completely flat.  It must have happened just as I turned into the motel, because I certainly would have noticed that.  My insurance company gets someone out in half-an-hour to put on the temporary spare, and ten miles south to State College (that's the name of a town, believe it or not) gets a quick cheap replacement at a tire place.  "It had nitrogen in it", I tell him.  "Oh, we always use nitrogen now" he said, so that was me put in my place.
          Actually, there's a long and interesting story about that tire, but I'll save it for another time.

1 comment:

Joe said...

I am at a loss to understand why it might be considered a good idea to use all that energy to liquify air, separate out the nitrogen, then compress it and store it in cylinders to fill tyres that let it escape back to the atmosphere. Sometimes very quickly in a blowout!
It cannot be to preserve the tyre substance from oxydation because the same process will be happening from the outside anyway (albeit at only one atmosphere pressure). Further, tyres usually wear out sooner than oxydation effects come into play. Someone please enlighten me.