Does this count as news? Nobody seems to know exactly why this manhole cover in Denver is flopping all around like a plastic frisbee. The Wise think it’s caused by displaced air trying to escape.
Maybe your experience is different, but I always had the idea that manhole covers were, like, real heavy and you couldn’t just toss them around. I don’t make a habit of plucking manhole covers out of the street, but I’m sure it would be difficult.
In just the past two years or so I’ve heard a lot of kooky things about Denver. What happened to it? The manhole covers aren’t the only things in Denver that seem off-kilter nowadays.
P.S.–If you have to walk a mile out of your way, do it to avoid a film called “A Field in England,” an incoherent mass of babbling piffle. If you have to go down a manhole to avoid it, do that.
Well … as a former Denverite, let me state, for the record, that this sort of thing is far from unknown, there. There has to be some serious pressure involved for a manhole cover to bounce around like that.
Denver is the only place I’ve ever thought of as being home, but it’s changed dramatically over the years, and I can’t so much as drive through there anymore. It breaks my heart too much, to go back and see my hometown reduced to a demented copy of Los Angeles.
When I was a young man, Denver had a spirit all its own, and was truly a privilege to live there. Now, it’s become a bland, place, with no personality, hyper-inflated real estate prices, and traffic that can easily be congested, 24 hours a day. It’s much like Los Angeles, where I have sat in traffic jams at 10 PM on The Five (Interstate 5). During my last visit, I had a hotel room about 30 miles north of the city, and after one harrowing night when I experienced someone pounding on my door at 3 AM, I decided to cut short my visit, checked out very early in the morning and made a beeline south. Even though it was well before 6 AM, I was running into traffic jams. Because I know the area, I was able to divert and avoid being stuck, but by the time I reach I 70, I felt that I was more escaping, than traveling.
I had to return, about a year later, but fortunately, I was able to arrange my visit to happen at night, so it wasn’t too bad. I have no plans to ever return. Actually, at this point, I not only avoid Denver, but I make it a point skirt Colorado when traveling by automobile.
They call it progress. They’re all crazy.
Denver is ruined, at this point.
Is this one of those AI things they are warning us about – don’t trust videos anymore? There is street I have to use a lot on which the city workers put all the manholes right where your car hits them and the bumps it causes are so annoying. Uneven railroad tracks are even worse.
I have never seen that before. There has to be a lot of air pressure for that to happen. I also knew they were very heavy, but not sure how much they weighted. So, I wanted to know, this is what I found.
“the standard manhole cover will weigh 90 to 150 pounds or more. Larger-diameter covers that are used by many cities can weigh upwards of 250 pounds. Manhole covers are often made out of cast iron, concrete or a combination of the two. This makes them inexpensive, strong, and heavy, usually weighing more than 113 kilograms (249 lb). The weight helps to keep them in place when traffic passes over them, and makes it difficult for unauthorized people without suitable tools to remove them.”
VERY hard to imagine air pressure tossing them around like plastic rings.
Remember the Tacoma Narrows Bridge named Galloping Gartie, that collapsed in 1940 with a catastrophic failure in relatively light wind. Yeah, wind is more or less air pressure, but what it can do under the right, or wrong, conditions.
I remember the video. It could give you nightmares.
Some form, or another, of this phenomenon has been happening in Denver for a long time. I remember seeing similar things on the news when I was still living under my parent’s roof.
There was a bridge in Charleston that really freaked me out. Sort of like one of those vine-and-plank bridges in a Tarzan movie, with cars and trucks on it.
When I was still under my parent’s roof, vines and planks were all we had. 🙂
Oh, that was Minnesota!