Oddities

I wish I had the patience and chutzpah of these folks. Seen at MotherJones:

Wayne is the odds-on favorite to win the challenge, in which drivers compete to push the automotive limits not of speed and power–a desire those gathered here consider old-fashioned and wasteful–but for the unsexy title of Most Fuel-Efficient Driver in the World.[...]

We take the interstate to Wayne’s house. The speed limit is 55, and most of the traffic is zipping past at 75 or so, but Wayne hovers around 50 mph. He’s riding the white line on the right side of the right-hand lane.[...]

“Buckle up tight, because this is the death turn,” says Wayne. Death turn? We’re moving at 50 mph. Wayne turns off the engine. He’s bearing down on the exit, and as he turns the wheel sharply to the right, the tires squeal–which is what happens when you take a 25 mph turn going 50. Cathy, Terry’s wife, who is sitting next to me in the backseat, grabs my leg. I grab the door handle. As we come out of the 270-degree turn, Cathy says, “I hope you have upholstery cleaner.”

We glide for over a mile with the engine off, past a gas station, right at a green light, through another green light–Wayne is always timing his speed to land green lights–and around a mall, using momentum in a way that would have made Isaac Newton proud. [...] Wayne is paying attention to the road, not the banter. He’s had to turn the engine back on earlier than he usually does after taking the death turn. “I hit the turn at 50, 51,” he says. “I should have hit it at 52.”

The article goes on to mention that Wayne wins the challenge by achieving 181mpg on a Honda Insight.

In acknowledgement of immigration protests in the U.S. scheduled for Monday….

The San Ysidro border crossing is reported to be the busiest international land border crossing in the world, and also serves as the southern terminus of I-5.

I’ll also point out that it’s kind of cool to slide the map east or west, following the border….

Just a little something for this week:

I know, it’s not particularly road-related, but I wanted to do something themed for the holiday weekend, and it’s been a very busy week to find something truly appropos. Annoyingly, Google Local doesn’t have high-res imagery of Jerusalem available.

Instead, I offer a view of St. Peter’s Square, forming a nontrivial portion of the territory of the Vatican City.

Actually, if you shift the picture just a bit to the right, you will see the entire country.

This week I had a hankering to do something other than an interchange. I wanted to do a roundabout. I had hoped to feature one of the Magic Roundabouts in the UK, in Swindon or in Hemel Hempstead…but unfortunately neither Google nor Microsoft has high-res aerial shots of either.

But I did find this….

Thanks to the good folks over at Google Globetrotting, we have a rotary with a Rotary logo in the middle! It links in with an interchange on the Route 280 freeway to boot.

After last week’s trip to North Pole, Alaska, I thought long and hard about what I could do for this week’s feature. Here’s what I came up with:

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the Lincoln Tunnel Helix.

The Helix forms the western approach to the Lincoln Tunnel, in Weehauken, New Jersey. Currently designated as NJ 495, it was officially I-495 until 1989 in belated recognition of the cancellation of the Mid-Manhattan Expressway. The Helix provides the means for traffic atop the bluff on the New Jersey side of the Hudson River to descend to tunnel depth.

For more information on the Helix and the Lincoln Tunnel, try checking out Steve Anderson’s Crossings of New York.

So, why show the Lincoln Tunnel for New Year’s? Well, I was going to do Times Square. However, the embeddable images from Google and Microsoft of Times Square don’t look all that impressive. This was the next closest interesting feature I could find.

Happy New Year everybody!