Fog
Man, revelation at 3:00AM in the morning. I had a draft ready to go called, "Books, Detergent and Big Egos." I'm sure you know what that would have been about. Heck I'll even give you an excerpt:
Sure, everybody wants to be famous. Everybody wants to be noticed and loved. Then there are those that are just out to help others live better lives. But sometimes I like being a bystander — just to see what happens. If you're next question is, "what have you seen," then I'll tell you: But you know what? We're scraping that, because frankly — I'm tired of hearing about it and tired of wanting to talk about it. Oh, but this article is still about hype. But it has to do with something more natural and widely loved. If you can't tell what I'm referring to from the picture, then kindly move on as you won't get the rest of this anyway.
The almighty Wikipedia defines fog as follows:
Fog is cloud in contact with the ground. It occurs when moisture from the surface of the Earth evaporates; as this evaporated moisture moves upward, it cools and condenses into the familiar phenomenon of fog. Fog differs from cloud only in that fog touches the surface of the Earth, while clouds do not. Picture yourself on top of a mountain, looking out into the San Francisco Bay at dawn. You'll probably be witnessing a pretty beautiful spectacle as the whole bay area is being engulfed by this monster called fog. The sky'll be perfectly clear above you, yet you'll see these clouds on the ground that just stop at a thousand feet. People I have talked to about the San Francisco area have dreamed of seeing a sight like that; seeing the buildings tower over the mist that contains lesser structures. Don't even mention the Golden Gate Bridge.
But there's another side to fog, a very dark and dreadful side. If you've lived in the bay area, especially in the mountainous costal regions, you'll share in this feeling — I hate it.
Fog is hyped. What makes fog so cool when it blinds people on the ground while people above don't know what the hell is going down below? I feel sorry for San Francisco, and I wonder when they take pictures of the city with a clear sky. I have not once seen the sky when walking along Market. The same is true for Pacifica, it's so depressing to wake up and see "fog in dem thar hills," only to have to drive through it on the way to work.
So going back to Wikipedia, if we scroll down we'll see the following:
Fog reduces visibility. Yes, first instinct is to say "duh." But do I need another reason? Daytime, nightime, it doesn't matter what time, fog can make you crash and die if you're not careful. Sometimes being careful isn't enough. Coming home from work (usually after midnight) during the last 6 days has proved to me that fog can not only be hard to see through; it can also slightly moisten the ground increasing the likelihood of crashes due to skids, especially going downhill. That's never fun. High beams you say? That doesn't help and it usually makes the situation worse. Too bad my Camry doesn't have fog lamps.
So if you're ever caught in fog, don't be like me and coast down hills in neutral, take your time and be safe. Hopefully, you'll be lucky enough never to catch yourself in that situation. To close, I'll apply my standard logic, "Fog is okay, just as long as I have nothing to do with it."
You may now go back to talking about 37Signals and Adaptive Path now1.
- If you have taken this article seriously, you should be slapped. Not every topic here has to be serious. If you had a good laugh, have a cookie. Go on, eat it. It's delicious.↩