Crushed Ice

Well, the ice tower that I yakked about a few posts back has developed a bad case of gravity poisoning. As always, click on the picture for a larger one.

It happened all at once, according to the paper. The guy who lives in the house on wheels was asleep, and heard what he thought sounded like an earthquake. Now, were I the one setting up the ice tower, and expected it to be, say, 200 feet tall, I would have everything I owned some distance greater than 200 feet away from the thing. Especially me.

The blocks are big - the little thing out front is a saw horse with floodlights, so that would give you some scale. If you do the calculations, the ice from the tower, accelerating at thirty two feet per second squared, falling a distance of 160', would seriously cut into your free time away from the hospital. I wonder if the guy's homeowner's insurance covers guests getting knocked on the noggin by three-ton ice chunks traveling at the speed of sound?

I guess the Jimmy Kimmel show called, and wanted to put the ice tower on national television, but only if the guy who owns it would agree to blow it up for the show. 160' ice tower plus explosives? I was looking for language to express the absurdity of this, but, find myself once again speechless when life is more absurd that what I can make up.

So, the ice tower is gone for this year. I imagine next year it'll be even taller. Like a duck returning to Capistrano, I'll be back there, too.