Ice, Tea

Monday, 28 March 2011

So, last night’s episode of The Amazing Race turned out to be one big commercial for Snapple (just click on that Amazing Race link and you’ll see what I mean). This happens every once in a while – Suvivor does it, too – there will be an episode that features a name brand; sometimes the players are playing to win a box of tools from Home Depot, or maybe they have to assemble a piece of furniture from IKEA. It doesn’t usually bother me.

In last night’s Snapple-fest, teams first had to stop at a tea store and sample some tea (nothing Snapple about that). Then, after arriving in India, they had to taste from 1,000 cups of tea and pick out the one that matched the flavor they had tasted prior to their flight. The clue they received after finishing that task was an unlabeled bottle of Snapple (the clue was printed on the underside of the cap). Anyway, when the first team checked in, Phil (the host) asked the team if they’d noticed the tea-influenced tasks of the leg. He also announced that Snapple was coming out with two new flavors and – as the winners of that leg of the race – they’d be the first to sample these new flavors. He presented two bottles to the team (holy shitty reward, Batman!). Actually, there was more to the reward than that (i.e., $20,000), but it’s funny how prominent Snapple was featured, especially considering that there were about four Snapple commercials during the show.

And that brings me to today: the three of us (I’m excluding Isla because she’s still crawling around the house and babbling like a drunkard) thought the new flavors sounded pretty enticing. I had an item to return to Target, so I stopped there on my way home, returned my item, received store credit, then ventured over to the grocery section. Lots of Snapple…no new flavors. Epic loss for Snapple – instead of extolling the wonders of the flavors, I am bemoaning the fact that, for probably the first time ever, product placement consciously caused me to attempt to buy said product, only to be unable to find it for sale.

Next:
Check out this graphic of Japan’s aftershocks. You just kind of have to watch it, you can’t manipulate as much as you’d like (or maybe I should say I can’t manipulate it as much as I’d like).

And if that’s too depressing, check this out (I laughed ’til I cried):

Tuesday, 29 March 2011

I arrived at Hamline University this morning for the first time in 12 days. I parked, as usual, four blocks away from class. When I was about a block away, I crossed over Hewitt Avenue, then began walking west towards my classroom. I noticed that, for some reason I couldn’t quite determine, a fifty foot stretch of Hewitt was thick with ice. There was no obvious runoff from the buildings, and the land around is pretty flat, so I couldn’t attribute the ice to snow coming down any hill. I thought to myself, “Wow, drivers are gonna have some trouble here.”

Moments later, a line of five cars came passing by (heading east). The first one slid a little bit, but no problem. The second car, seeing the ice, slowed down ever so slightly. The next two cars proceeded in a similar fashion. I think the patch of ice was a real shock because no where else was there any ice (indeed, I never came across any at all on my to school or work today). If it was a snowy or icy day, the drivers probably would’ve been preparing for such icy patches, but this was completely unexpected.

The fifth driver hit the patch and began fish-tailing a little bit. Since there were no other cars around, he should’ve just kept driving and, though he may have slid into the other lane, he wouldn’t have faced any issues. But he didn’t “just keep driving.” Instead, he decided to slam on his brakes. This caused his car’s back end to slide uncontrollably to the left and then, sliding forward, he crashed into a snowbank and surely would’ve landed onto the very sidewalk I was traversing had he not been stopped by a tree. He hit the tree dead-center, so that it buckled in the front of his car pretty bad. The tree made a snapping sound, though it appeared to weather the punch. Once the momentum ceased, gravity took over and the car, now 6 inches shorter than it had been, slid back down onto the road. A sixth car, approaching slowly, drove into the opposing lane to get around the wreckage.

I walked about another fifty feet before turning and going inside a building (from where I could no longer see the car). When I left (about 90 minutes later), the car was gone. A big chunk of tree bark was gone from the tree, and there were enough pieces of the car on the snowbank to build a scale-model replica of the original car.

As I passed by the tree, another car slid on the ice patch (no incidents). About five minutes later, I made the treacherous trek verrrry sloooowly.

Somebody should do something about that.

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