Enoch’s Thoughts

I have been awash in books lately, thanks to a couple of Barnes and Noble gift cards. I finished Made By Hand, read all of The Sparrow, and have read half of Borg’s The Heart of Christianity (for an impromptu book club), a third of Pratchett’s Soul Music, and started Richard Powers’ Galatea 2.2, a 1995 science fiction based on neural networks. In the midst of all this I ran across a couple of interesting quotes. But first, this brake.

Stop it!

I hate using my brakes. But before you decide you will never ride in a car with me, hear me out.

When I was in my mid teens, my Dad taught me how to grease the steering components of a car. Since then, improved lubricants and seals have rendered this skill nearly useless, but at the time it was a regular item of automotive maintenance. The next step on my long journey into automotive upkeep was changing “brake linings,” as we referred to them at the time – the arc-shaped shoes that expanded inside the “brake drum” to slow and stop the vehicle. For passenger cars, drum brakes were replaced by disk brakes starting in the late 60s, while drums are still used in plenty of applications, like 18-wheelers.

A conservative calculation suggests that I have changed at least 50 sets of brakes since then, most of them in a driveway, sweating in the sun, but some on a winter’s night when the cold wind makes the small metal parts hard to hold, and skinning a knuckle hurts like heck.

That calculation doesn’t count brake repairs, such the time I rebuilt the rear brakes of my Sprite in the parking lot of a service station in Newnan, using the one wrench that the disgruntled station owner deigned to loan me. I would have just driven the rest of the way to Columbus without brakes, but I had my girlfriend with me at the time, so that seemed a little irresponsible. That Sprite (the car, not the girl) taught me a lot of valuable lessons, including the important difference between Castrol brake fluid and regular U.S brake fluid.

Every time I mash a brake pedal with my big, boot-clad foot, pressurizing the hydraulic fluid in the master cylinder, multiplying the force to the slave cylinders, and bashing semi-metallic linings into rapidly rotating steel surfaces, I think about the many brake linings I’ve changed, and the work required to do so. Like any sort of maintenance task, changing brakes brings a feeling of accomplishment, but that doesn’t mean I want to do it every day.

So I drive to minimize the use of my brakes, unlike a lot of people on the road. You can spot ’em several ways. Their front wheels are darker than their back wheels, ’cause they are covered with an unnatural coat of brake dust. The noses of their cars dip down every time they put on the brakes, and pop back up when they finally come to a halt. They accelerate too fast, then have to slam on the brakes because there really wasn’t room or reason to accelerate that fast. And they follow too close.

The most obvious thing I do to save brakes is leave plenty of following distance. The minimum recommended distance is 2 seconds, easily counted using road markers or lines. But if the car I’m following is following too close I leave extra room. Ditto if the car behind me is following too close. Or if the road is slick. Or if I’m pulling a trailer, or hauling a load of lumber, or people. Especially if I’m hauling people.

Over the years I’ve heard otherwise sensible people explain all the reasons why they don’t leave sufficient following distance. Their reasons are like the lame excuses people use for not wearing seatbelts. I have a degree in Physics from the Georgia Institute of Technology, but in case you don’t understand Newton’s laws of mass, velocity, inertia and force, just take my word for it: bad things can happen when you lose control of more than 2000 pounds of metal moving at more than 80 feet every second. OK, I’ll get off the soapbox now.

Watching other people drive in the parking deck at work offers a relatively low-speed example of the impact of acceleration on brake usage. Like most decks, ramps connect the floors, and I’ve found that, if I accelerate slowly up the entrance ramp, I can make the first turn without having to touch the brakes, nor frightening my fellow parkers who are walking to and from their cars. It seems pretty obvious, but 90% of the people I observe accelerate briskly halfway up the ramp, then have to brake to make the turn, not only wearing their brakes, but also burning unnecessary fuel. As my fellow citizens navigate traffic lights on the busy streets of our city, they exhibit similar behavior.

Part of the solution is simply to do things earlier, leave some extra time. The normal things people do to try to speed up their trip don’t help much, if at all. So I go to bed earlier, get up earlier, leave for work earlier, get there earlier than I have to. And it works out fine.

I encourage to join me in braking free. It will set you, er, free.

Quotes

Here a couple of quotes I stumbled upon in my reading this week that I will present without further comment.

The Brain — is wider than the Sky —
For — put them side by side —
The one the other will contain
With ease — and You — beside —

The Brain is deeper than the sea —
For — hold them — Blue to Blue —
The one the other will absorb —
As Sponges — Buckets — do —

The Brain is just the weight of God —
For — Heft them — Pound for Pound —
And they will differ — if they do —
As Syllable from Sound —

Emily Dickinson

There are times … when we are in the midst of life — moments of confrontation with birth or death, or moments of beauty when nature or love is fully revealed, or moments of terrible loneliness — times when a holy and awesome awareness comes upon us. It may come as deep inner stillness or as a rush of overflowing emotion. It may seem to come from behind us, without any provocation, or from within us, evoked by music or a sleeping child. If we open our hearts at such moments, creation reveals itself to us in all its unity and fullness. And when we return from such a moment of awareness, our hearts long to find a way to capture it in words forever, so that we can remain faithful to its higher truth. … When my people search for a name to give to the truth we feel at those moments, we call it God, and when we capture that understanding in timeless poetry, we call it praying.

Mary Doria Russell

The Sparrow