Three Potato
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Mentioned several times this week, a humble narrator found himself taking a birthday walk here in Pittsburgh, and there was a regular cavalcade of CSX trains witnessed for the whole way. I was listening to a short playlist of songs, which I refer to as ‘my theme music,’ which includes a song about Superman by the 1990’s group ‘Crash Test Dummies.’
The eventual destination for the walk was the now familiar Sly Fox Brewery in the South Side Flats area, along the Monongahela River, where libation and good company was found.
This was my 20,820th day on the planet. That’s 499,680 hours, by the way. I still get pretty good mileage despite being so close to a half million hours in, although the frame has become a bit warped, and I could definitely use a new set of brakes.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’ve been contemplating the whole Superman is ‘more powerful than a locomotive’ thing of late. CSX #7269, up there above is – for instance – a rebuilt GE AC4400CWM model locomotive. It weighs 426,000 pounds and produces 4,400 HP of traction. That means Superman has to be capable of exerting at least 5,000 HP worth of counter force through his hands if he’s going to overpower it. Figure in momentum, and Supes would need to muster maybe two to three times that amount of force to bring it to a stop.
Now as to what ‘horse power’ means, it’s complicated. Also complicated is how Superman might stop a train without causing a derailment to ripple through all the coupled carriages behind the engine.
Suffice to say that Superman is surprisingly capable, and that the laws of physics don’t entirely apply to him. Strange visitor from another planet, indeed.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Just a week or so before my half millionth hour on the planet, this is what I was getting up to. To be fair, I’ve had worse Birthdays.
Me? I barely manifest any horse power at all. A strong breeze is enough to push me backwards, and I was recently knocked onto my butt after colliding with a housefly back at HQ.
To be fair, that was some fly I ran into. Wonder if it might have been Kryptonian? Does a fly perceive us as meat locomotives, or just as strange visitors from the same planet? What do you say, lords and ladies?6
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Hank Linhart
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