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Thursday, September 22, 2011

Cornadoes

It seems like every time I turn my steering wheel to the west, the universe seems to know it. Or at least Mother Nature does.

Occasionally, I get the opportunity to travel to South Dakota for a meeting. Since someone needs to bring the marketing materials, and I'm not high falutin' enough to fly a measly 250 miles, I get to toss a box of highlighters bearing the firm name into my trunk and drive.

I'm not the kind of person who loves a good road trip. Especially if I have to drive. Alone. For 4.5 hours. Through an area in which one of the most interesting features is the endless occurrence if corn fields. And the wind is at a minimum speed of about mach 10.

Yes, almost every time I have to get behind the steering wheel to get to SoDak, it seems to be even windier than usual. And that's saying something in a state with nothing to stop the wind for about 500 miles except a bit of grass and about 3 trees.

This time, with the last several weeks being pretty dry, the corn (and everything else) was pretty dessicated.  As a result, the leaves were being stripped from the stalks and were drawn up into swirling columns every so often.

The grass seeds, too, were being ripped away by the wind, producing an effect that sounded like rain and looked like warp speed.

Overall, it was oddly entertaining to watch.

I might have gawked more if it wasn't so hard to drive 65+ miles per hour with your steering wheel cocked 20 degrees to the left.

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