Potato Chip in a Cloud

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This summer I took a picture of these clouds. Actually, I have a digital camera, so I took 3,785 pictures. After deleting 3762 photos, I noticed something rather shocking.

If you scan the photo very quickly with squinted eyes that are blurred by computer overuse, you will see the outline of a potato chip in the clouds. Not just any chip, but a kettle fried chip. You know, the kind that are all crinkley  and disfigured.

When I told my neighbor Lestor about the find, word got out. Lester must have a lot of relatives. The photo went viral in the Goshen News and Wakarusa Tribune. Suddenly people began showing up at my house to see the actual photo of the potato chip.

In the last week, over 18,000 pilgrims have showed up at my doorstep to view the potato chip photo. Campers are parked on a 5 mile stretch of road leading up to our house, neighbors are selling tickets to see the photo, visitors’ dogs are barking their brains out 24 hours a day, and toilet paper is blowing everywhere.

This is out of control.

Yesterday, a guy appeared at my door wearing a t-shirt proclaiming, “I SAW THE POTATO CHIP”.

People are kissing hand, my computer, and my pantry doors.

I’m just glad that I didn’t see a NASCAR in the clouds.

Heat Your Home With Plastic Bags

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Many of the world’s great scientific discoveries came quite by accident. Remember “Come here Watson, I need you?” Then there’s the discovery of Wheaties. A cook at an institution was making gruel for breakfast when the porridge was spilled on a hot stove, making a crispy flake. The cook ate the flake and , viola, Wheaties was born.

In the same spirit of serendipitous invention I have discovered how to heat your home using plastic bags. Not just any plastic bag, but the kind you put broccoli into at the grocery store.

I was at work recently and accidentally let my plastic bag come in contact with the drywall. When I let go of it I noticed that it was sticking to the wall just like a booger.

In the photo above, the little speck on the right hand side is a booger, not a bug. Apparently, where I work no one does a “Booger Background Check” and they hire people who wipe boogers on walls. Come to think of it, they don’t even have a question on the job application that asks “Do you ever wipe boogers on your employers walls?”

But I digress.

Anyway, the bag stuck to the wall because of static electricity. The bag had rubbed on my fleece coat and decided to hang out with the paint  and gypsum on the drywall.

So I got to thinking, “What would happen if you took all of the plastic bags out of the recycle bin at the grocery store, rubbed them on your fleece coat, and stuck them to the walls of your house? You’d get more dead air space and as we all know, that translates into a warmer house.

By my estimates, 5000 plastic bags in an average bedroom would raise the temperature by 3.5 degrees Celsius.

You would need to acquire a lot of plastic bags, and go to the Thrift Shop Second Hand Store where you can buy old fleece coats that say “Aspen Police Department Ski Team” for a dollar.

Let me know if you are having trouble attaching the bags to the walls of your home. I can probably get that mystery employee to come over to your house and attach the bags using boogers.

Weird Fall Colors

The reds and the golds look a little bit odd this year. Despite the nice white on the straight and up and down parts, something just isn’t quite right. I don’t know if the black stuff is a fungus or not. And those little dots remind me of pixels or LEDs on a sign.

Maybe the forest fire smoke from Idaho, Montana, California, Nevada, Wyoming, Utah, and Elbonia are messing up the colors.

The gold probably is the best of all the colors, and does look kind of impressive against the blue sky.

A picture is worth a thousand words, so let me show you what I mean:

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This fall scene was taken at Silverthorn, Colorado. I don’t know. This fall just doesn’t seem like the ones in the past.

Tow Truck Driver Fist Fight

This past weekend, I was in Denver and saw probably the coolest thing in my life: Two tow truck drivers in a fight. A nasty fist fight, with amazing results. You probably didn’t see this in the news.

It seems a guy’s hummer overheated on Colfax Avenue. He coasted into the gas station I was at, called 911, and left the scene in a friend’s Smart Car.

As I sat watching, a tow truck showed up and backed up to the front of the Hummer. At about the same time, another tow truck from company “B” showed up. The driver got out and started yelling at the driver from company “A”.

The heated exchange lasted for a few minuets, then they started throwing punches. After an ugly 20 seconds of John Wayne fist fighting, driver “B” jumped into his truck and fired it up. He did a u-turn, and backed up to the rear of the Hummer. He hopped out and ran to the back of his truck and started hooking up to the disabled Hummer.

Driver “A” ran to the Hummer and started hooking up his tow truck.

Both men jumped into their vehicles at the same time and fired them up. They both lurched forward, wheels spinning, engines racing, and thick, burnt rubber tire smoke filling the air. I heard the sound as if taffy were being pulled.

One driver was in a Ford, the other in a Chevy. The tug-o-war lasted about 2 minutes, but seemed an eternity. The smoke choked me and was so dense I couldn’t see any of the vehicles.

Sometime during the fight, the trucks both stopped, unhooked, and drove out of the blue cloud at the same time. When the smoke cleared,  this is what I saw:

 

 

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A stretched Hummer. Who would’ve believed it? The sheet metal wasn’t even wrinkled. Amazing.

The drivers looked back at each other, then the Hummer, and they both tore out of there like jackrabbits.

Someday I’d like to see them do that with the Smart Car.

Weird Magnetic Spot in Colorado

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This past summer I added a freaky item to my cave tours: The Weird Magnetic Spot. Here you see a few guests trying the demonstration.

During my tours I stop in the middle of this circle and say, “The owners of this cave found out that there is an unusual magnetism at this very spot. So they laid out the concrete in this circle pattern with the ‘X’ in the middle, and they showed us tour guides how to demonstrate that fact to our guests.”

Then I take out my wedding ring, and an ordinary rubberband. I stick the rubberband through the ring and slant it upwards. The ring climbs UP the rubberband to my uphill hand.

I tell my group, “I don’t know what makes it work, but you can try it after the tour.”

I found one lady standing in the circle after the tour with her eyes closed. “Yes, I can feel the energy,” she told me. Her friends said that she was the best at that stuff.

I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I learned the trick in a magic book.