Ok, someone needs to explain the MILE thing to me.

[Parche]

[sarcasmo]

1. I used to be a truck driver, let me try.

As you drive on the highway you will noticed the mile marker signs. Truckers use them to pin point their locations to another trucker letting him know where smokey may be hiding out. You as a driver can use them to know how long it is to your off ramp. Let's use exit 69 for fun. From the 0 marker you would have 69 miles to go until your off ramp, and every mile you will see the little green sign go up, or down depending on the direction you are going.

[billyskank]

10. I noticed them on a road trip in America

I thought, oh, they mark every mile on their freeways. In fact you even mark the hundred yard boundaries too, if I remember right. I remember finding that quite interesting.

Then when I got back home to Britain, I noticed for the first time that we do exactly the same thing back here. I had never seen it before.

Thirty-two years living here. I'm so observant. :blush:

[Jamastiene]

12. That makes perfect sense.

But, why would smokey work for the bunch that put mile markers up to make their jobs harder?

You can ALWAYS count on me to ask the dumbest questions and zillions of them, but I just gotta know. :dunce:

[sarcasmo]

17. Smokey doesn't work for them, let's say he is sitting at mile marker 39

You are going north bound and the other trucker is going south bound around mile marker 45. You can tell each other that smokey is sitting at mile marker 39.

[Jamastiene]

18. But, who puts the mile markers up?

:D

[sarcasmo]

19. The States do, they all have them even on your state roads if you look close enough.

Highway mile markers have existed for a long time.

[Jamastiene]

21. But don't smokeys and states work on the same team?

They are both part of the government, aren't they? :D

Hint: I'm really just playing. My original joke was subtle, poorly played. :P

[sarcasmo]

26. I got the joke part but many people have no clue what that # every mile on the highway means.

[Jamastiene]

29. So, my joke wasn't so bad?

I thought I had messed it up.

I understand what you are saying. I use those mile markers when I am out of town to keep up with where I am. I have a tendency to memorize the way there and then when I do get lost, which is somewhat rare, I just enjoy the ride. The mile markers help in both cases. :D

[sarcasmo]

31. They work great for directions. I use them with my Dad all the time and it's easier to remember the

exit # for the highway than a long street name.

[kentauros]

2. A surveyor or mapper (that's me!) would tell you that a mile

is 80 chains, 320 rods, 1760 yards, 5280 feet and 1.609344km for those few that request their surveying in metric :P

[MrCoffee]

3. you just made up chains as a unit of measurement, didn't you?

[kentauros]

4. Not according to my Pocket Ref

nor wikipedia.org :)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunter's_chain

We could also get into poles and perches ;)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rod_(length)

[Critters2]

5. Poles and Parches? nt

[kentauros]

7. It's the equivalent is the ox goad.

Rods aren't used for measurement anymore, though.

"The rod was phased out as a unit of measurement that could legally be used in the United Kingdom as part of a ten year metrication process that began on 24 May 1965<3>. Its modern-day obscurity was used as an indicator of Grampa Simpson's age in the episode entitled ‘A Star Is Burns’, when he uttered: “My car gets forty rods to the hogshead, and that's the way I likes it!” This translates into 504 U.S. gallons per mile, or about 1.2 liters per meter. In units more normal for this purpose, it is 0.00198 miles per US gallon (or about 10.48 feet per gallon) or 118,500 L/100 km."

[Jamastiene]

13. Nope, they sure don't.

They are used for comforting nowadays. My rod and my staff sure comfort me. I don't know how, but they do. :P

[MrCoffee]

6. Awesome, I just learned my new thing for the day

I can now put my brain on standby.

You'd think that after 32 years on Earth someone would have mentioned Gunter's Chains to me, but noooooooooo.

[kentauros]

8. I only learned about chains when I had to take a topographic drafting class back in the early 80s

Now it's all GPS and GIS :)

[Jamastiene]

14. I learned about chains when I dropped acid back in 10th grade.

My Joan Jett posters had chains while they were chasing me around the room. :scared:

[kentauros]

16. lol!

Not laughing at your misery, just the visual. Imagine if it had been Alice in Chains ;)

I never got wild rides on acid, just extreme mellowness

[Jamastiene]

20. I'll never forget that trip for as long as I live.

I ended up under the bed for about an hour that day. I had smoked a joint at school. It turned out to be laced with acid and who knows what else. I had to check out of school early. The teachers were frightening me. It really really messed with me.

The entire posters came off the walls, not just her image. In other words, the entire rectangular shaped posters were coming after me and her arms were in 3D. That was the weirdest part.

After a couple hours of being chased with chains by the Joan Jett posters I ended up hiding under the bed for an hour. I thought and thought while I was under the bed. The best defensive action I figured out to take was to keep my eyes closed. The freaky visuals stopped when I closed my eyes and I just saw pretty colors then. It was the only way to stop the bad visuals, lol.

I finally got the nerve to crawl out from under the bed. I kept my eyes closed and crawled into bed and under the covers.

The fan was on. So, when I felt the fan blowing against the covers, I held my breath just for good measure. I figured if I held my breath, my hiding place wouldn't be found out. I'll never forget that freaky day. I ended up finally coming down about 8 hours later.

I decided acid wasn't my thing after that. :scared:

[kentauros]

23. Acid always took forever to metabolize in my body, too

My last and maybe best trip took 36 hours to peter out. I did like the closed-eyes "acid animations" though. At the time, it was like early "globby module" computer animation, so I remained mesmerized by that. The trip on the beach was wild because the midnight sand turned into ants. They didn't bite and I knew they weren't real, so I didn't freak.

I suppose if I had been "bearing" a chain and rod and both had come to life while trying to survey sand dunes, then I would have lost it :P

Sorry to hear your trip was so traumatic, but you likely made the right decision to stop taking it. I haven't had acid in well over a decade and I don't really miss it.

[Runcible Spoon]

30. sounds like you got "dusted"...you can't really smoke LSD

PCP is bad, yo.

[LanternWaste]

32. But...!

But how many hogsheads in a jigger?

Hogsheads part of the metric system, yes? :evilgrin:

[nickgutierrez]

9. Distance fail? n/t

[Jamastiene]

11. Simple: Republicans invented maps.

Only they could invent such a system that claims "1 inch = 1 mile." Of course, by that same logic, women HAD to have invented the Humvee in order to spot the guys with itty bitty "miles," take note, and avoid them. :evilgrin: :P

[Taverner]

15. Miles suck. We need to get on board with metric.

The rest of the world has.

[pokerfan]

22. Maybe after we crash a few more Mars probes

http://www.cnn.com/TECH/space/9909/30/mars.metric.02">(CNN) -- NASA lost a $125 million Mars orbiter because a Lockheed Martin engineering team used English units of measurement while the agency's team used the more conventional metric system

[kentauros]

24. I thought I had read it was 500 million?

Nevertheless, far more millions than I own.

Luckily, I don't have to argue with the redneck piper that used to work where I do about the rest of the world using metric piping (he didn't believe such pipe and related equipment existed and that our system was superior because it wasn't metric :crazy: )

[pokerfan]

25. Yeah, I thought it was off too

From wiki: Total project cost was $327.6 million for both orbiter and lander (not including Deep Space 2). Out of this, $193.1 million were for spacecraft development, $91.7 million for launch, and $42.8 million for mission operations.

[Orsino]

27. Let's not dumb it down.

No need to fall back on their primitive "Metric" system, which was obviously designed for backward countries whose education systems aren't teaching multiplication and division by anything other than ten.

Here in Real America, we are not frightened by numbers like 1.609 and 5,280.

[kentauros]

28. or numbers like 43,560

(sq.ft. per acre)

or 27,154.285714 gal./acre of sheet-flow from 1" of rain ;)
(retention pond calculation numbers)

[akwapez]

33. Mom I'd Like to Electrocute?