Time tunnel...

On my way to and from work my journey takes me through a tunnel. According to Wikipedia this tunnel is exactly 1150m long or in old money 0.72 miles. If the traffic is travelling normally at an average speed of 60mph this takes approximately 45 seconds to travel through.

One of the things I like to do is to hold my breath as I go through the tunnel. If travelling at speed this is no problem, but I have been known to be gasping for breath when the traffic is slow.

A few years ago I was stuck in the tunnel for over an hour. A freak snowstorm occurred and I had been in the car for 4 hours before I had even entered the tunnel. Normally my journey to the tunnel would have taken about 15 minutes. The snow had come from nowhere and the roads had not been gritted.

I had a problem, as I entered the tunnel I became acutely aware that I needed to empty my bladder. It was 8.30 at night and I wanted to go when I left work at 4.30. It was at the stage when it gets painful and I was acutely aware of my legs jiggling up and down as I tried to ignore the mounting pressure. I looked around the car and noticed an empty water bottle poking out from under the passenger seat.

http://www.fallingpixel.com/products/222/mains/tunnel1.jpg


I now had to make the decision, but I was desperate so despite the bright lights, the nearby cars and the awkwardness of the position I made a decision to use the bottle. But when I came to it I couldn't. I think I got stage fright, suddenly aware of the other drivers, or worried that I might miss. Thankfully the attempt seemed to calm the need and the desperate feeling was averted.

The tunnel and I became closer on that night.

The greatest gift that the tunnel can give is a strange phenomena. The tunnel is only just over 1km long but that is enough for the weather on the entrance of the tunnel to differ from the exit. Occasionally it is raining as I enter the tunnel and not as I exit or vice versa. Last week the effect was total. As I entered the tunnel it was grey and drizzling. As I exited, only three quarters of a minute later the sun was shining in a blue sky.

Magic? Time travel? Or a portal to a parallel universe? You choose. I think the parallel universe seems the most plausible.

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sparkly bathroom prevented by natural chemical equilibria

Image
I have had the pleasure of cleaning the bathroom today. I have used a number of different products over the years to find a chemical that will remove the annoying marks from the tiles, taps and shower screen. The hard water means that no matter how clean and sparkly I get the taps, they are only two showers away from being once again covered in the annoying white powder.   Crystals of limescale (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Kesselstein_k.jpg) There is a lot of interesting chemistry involved in limescale. It is essentially deposits of insoluble calcium carbonate left behind from the hot water. But how does it get into the water in the first place and why doesn't it stay in it? Limescale initially starts as limestone, chalk and other similar sedimentary rocks that formed from the bodies of tiny calcium containing sea creatures that lived in warm shallow tropical seas millions of years ago. See the BBC clip at this learning zone site. Since their formation these rocks have been
Read more

Polka dot, 7 inches, 15 minutes, luke warm

Image
January 2010 and a new craze hit Facebook. Across the social network women started to post colours as their status. Some posted beige, some ivory, some hot pink, some polka dot. For a while people across the world were confused, intrigued, indeed fascinated by what these colours could mean. In fact the colours referred to the colour of the bra the woman was wearing that particular day. This 'craze' was in aid of a breast cancer awareness campaign a fantastic cause and in my opinion a clever and innovative use of Facebook. Over the last couple of days some of the ladies have begun to post a length measured in inches followed by a time in minutes. This has resulted in a status that might read '6 inches 25 minutes'. Oh how amusing...I like a bit of smut but I found these updates strangely annoying. Obviously it doesn't mean what it says and is code for something fairly inane and boring. So slightly intrigued and determined to crack the code I did what I always
Read more

When Halloween Was Scary

It's funny how when you are a kid things are scary. I remember one Halloween walking down the road in the afternoon (it wasn't even dark) to post a letter for my Mum. I was probably about 10 or 11. As I walked down the road I heard the loudest pantomime villain laugh. I looked around and could see no none. It then happened again and to say I was unnerved is an understatement. I was properly scared. I quickly turned on my heels and sprinted home. At that age lots of things are scary. I used to quite like being scared. My father used to video the Hammer House of Horror shows that were shown on a Saturday night and my brother and I used to watch them Sunday mornings. I remember one which involved a porcelain doll. The doll was found in a large country house and throughout the film caused numerous instances of terror and death. At the end the couple flee the house and the closing shot shows the doll peeking out of their suitcase. My brother was so scared of this that the sheer me
Read more