planes and lorries

I love working near an airport. I still get excited when I'm driving along the road and a plane goes right overhead and it's really close cos it's either taking off or landing. Obviously I do know which of the two it's doing, cos i know where the airport is in relation to the road, but it's exciting whichever it's doing. Well that covers the planes bit of the post, the lorries bit is a bit more complicated.

For a start, have I even spelt the plural of lorry correctly? I went for changing -y to -ies rather than adding an s, but what do I know. I just think I like the way lorries looks better than lorrys.

Anyway, for several months there were major roadworks on the motorway and lorries weren't using the motorway much because of the lane restrictions. Because of this I put aside my commutor ponderings and thought about different things, but now the roadworks are gone and the lorries are back. I'm re-developing the ability to identify the companies lorries belong to by their colour and shape. (Christian Salvesen ones are a doddle to spot, not entirely sure what they transport, but that's not the point). But more impotantly I've finally worked out why some of those really big trucks have wheels that don't actually go round, and in fact appear to be entirely usless.

This breakthrough occured the day I started wondering about number plates. After all you sometimes see the front bits of lorries, when it's just the cab bit because they don't have a load to transport (sorry for the lack of technical language, but I've just got to blog this, cos it's taken up a considerable part of my communting time to think it all through). I decided that they must have extra number plates so that when they do have a load they can stick their number plate on the very back so that it can be seen. Now I'm guessing they don't use velcro, but probably something similar. Although, maybe they're not actually detachable fter all, maybe each front only has one back bit it can be attached to, or maybe each one has several. But then, what if someone got confused and put the wrong front on the wrong back? What then huh?

You can probably tell that I've spend way too much time thinking about all this, but that's just what happens when you spend so much time on the motorway. But all this stuff about number plates did help me realise why the lorries don't always seem to be using all their wheels at once - it's because they have a set of wheels that they need when they are gonig along just as the cab part of the truck. But when the cab is connected up to the back bit (or load, as I've also called it), it doesn't need to use those wheels anymore. Perhaps it's a bit like stabilisers on childrens bikes - when they get bigger they don't need them anymore!

Well, there you go, if you've ever wondered about lorries, now you know, and if you've never wondered, well you also now know. Thanks to my family for bearing with me when I've come out with randon comments during phone conversations during my process of thinking all this through. And now that I've finally got it all down on my blog maybe I'll be able to stop thinking about lorries, and go for something like rear view mirrors in white vans (But that's a whole nother story).

Oh, and the sausages thing - just a kid in my class who wouldn't stop saying the word, which led to another child being really upset and having to be taken out ad calmed down. Pretty much all in a days work though, so not worth as much space on my blog as the lorry thoughts.

ps A note to my regular readers, if I have any. I'll try to come up with some slightly less random things to post about asap. Oh, and it's almost my 100th post. How cool is that!