Friday - Trip to Eugene

Dreams

I woke my son John up around 20 till eight this morning. He finally comes downstairs around eight. He tells me he had three dreams since I first woke him up 20 minutes ago but it had seemed like two hours to him.

I also had a dream this morning. I had colorfully printed sheet of paper about the size of a place mat. It seemed to have some ads for cars on it. It had a thin strip of plastic stuck to the back about eight inches long, and a half of an inch wide, and one sixteenth of an inch thick. There were several cars listed in the ad. I copied one of the car names into a blank on the sheet and then pressed a spot over the plastic strip. The plastic strip was a cell phone, which made a call, got the information about the specified car, and then displayed it on this same sheet of paper.

I was astounded that the strip was a cell phone that worked. I tried to tell my wife about it. She was sitting at a table talking to two middle aged women. At first she brushed me off as she is wont to do when I start talking technical stuff, and besides I was interrupting her conversation. I persisted and she relented and listened to my story.

Serendipity

I drove to Eugene this morning. I took my daughter Kathryn and her friend Emily to "Duck Days" at the University of Oregon. The girls are trying to make up their minds what school they want to attend next fall. Right now it seems to be between the University of Washington in Seattle and U of O in Eugene.

The University had sent us a parking pass that was supposedly good for lot 34, but when we got there the lot was completely full. I stopped at a gate house and explained our dilemma. The man there gave us a map and pointed out where there were some long term parking meters where we might be able to find a spot. I asked the girls for ten to twenty quarters and Kathryn gave me a handfull. I dropped the girls at the union and drove to the recommended spot. There were a whole bunch of spaces there and the meters were good for five hours. It was 11 AM, so five hours would take us to 4 PM, which should be good enough. So how much is this going to cost? 25 cents buys you 20 minutes, so I start shoving quarters in. I run out just as the meter reaches five hours. Bizarre.

Science Demo

As part of the "Duck Days" tour, we attended a lecture given by three professors from the college of Natural Science. One of the presentations was about interesting work being done by current students, and one the students mentioned was Ben Scholl, who is a friend of my oldest son. Pretty cool.

One of the professors gave us a little science demo. He had an aluminum pipe about six feet long with an inside diameter of a little more than half an inch . He had two slugs that fit easily inside the pipe. Holding the pipe vertically, he dropped one slug in the top of the pipe. It immediately fell out the bottom. Then he dropped the second slug into the top of the pipe. We waited several seconds for something to happen and then it too fell out of the bottom of the pipe.



The way I understand what happened was that the second slug was a magnet. Falling through the tube generated electrical currents in the tube, which generated a magentic field, which interfered with the magetic field of the slug, and so restrained its' fall.

The same thing could be done with a copper tube and a magnet. It took a long time to find a decent video of this demo. It seems most science types have a hard time making a decent movie. Many provided no context. A demo like this needs a "nothing up sleeves" introduction that few provide. There is the "SuperMagnetMan", but, well, that's another issue.

Driving

Eugene is about 100 miles due South of Portland on Interstate 5. It is three lanes each way till somewhere South of Salem, and then it turns into two lanes. Traffic flows pretty well but is given to clogs that can slow you down and last for 15 miles. Going down to Eugene was not too bad. The farther you get from Portland, the more the traffic thins out and the more consistant the drivers are.

Coming back to Portland is much worse. I am sure that part of it is that I am tired, it is at the end of the day. I think a bigger part is that the traffic gets more jammed up the closer you get to Portland, so it feels like the pressure is building. The picture is from an ODOT (Oregon Department of Transportation) camera. I pulled it Saturday morning when traffic is much lighter.

The speed limit for most of the road is 65 MPH, and on the way South most drivers who are in a hurry are content to drive at 75 MPH. People keep a respectable distance and there is not much pushing or shoving. Occasionally a slow poke from the right lane will pull out to pass an even slower slowpoke and you will have to slow down until they have meandered on past the obstacle and moved back over to the right lane. Generally speaking they do that fairly promptly, which lets the hurry up gang resume their zooming pace.

Northbound is something else. The time of day may have had something to do with it. It was almost 5:30 PM when we left Eugene so we have people going home from work, and being as it is Friday, they may be going somewhere for the weekend. So we have more traffic, more people not paying complete attention, more dawdlers, and more speeders (people who are going 80 MPH and more). It is not possible to just set the cruise control and go. The speed of the traffic is constantly changing. You may be stuck going 60 MPH until a slowpoke pulls over and then the fast lane picks up to 65 MPH for a mile or two, and then it changes again. No more just set the cruise control and leave it.

Sometimes I am tempted to just move over to the right lane and mosey along at whatever speed the trucks are going. That is often 55 MPH, which would add 45 minutes to the trip, each way. And there is no guarantee that you would be undisturbed at that speed. You are very liable to come up behind some pleasant individual mosing along at 50 or even 45 MPH. Or you are liable to find yourself holding up a hole line of Kenworths who are all breathing down your neck wondering why you are such a slowpoke.

I need to find a less stressful way to operate on this route.

Update September 2016 replaced missing pictures.