Lessons in wind resistance

A number of years ago, my wife, Marilyn, dispatched my daughter, Ashley, and myself to Lowe’s to pick up some lumber and plywood for a bookcase she wanted us to build.
I guess I should have borrowed the neighbor’s pickup, but maybe having a bit too much pride, I took off in my Escort station wagon. I figured if we tilted the plywood sheets at an angle, it would fit.
Well, guess what, it didn’t fit. I seem to vaguely recall the people at Lowe’s urging me to go back home and borrow the neighbor’s pickup. Not me, we would get them home in the Escort, or rather, on top of the Escort.
No we didn’t securely tie the plywood down with the tobacco twine Lowe’s provided. I had more sense than that. I knew that wouldn’t hold it.
Ashley and I would roll the windows down in the front seats and we would hold it down with our free hand all the way back home.
What I soon discovered was how little wind it took to make the plywood get airborne. I don’t remember how many sheets we had on the roof that night, but I remember going down back roads that we could get away with going 20 mph so our plywood wouldn’t fly all over the road.
I have to add in to this story that the rest of the family thought that Independence Day was one of their favorite movies of all times. While I had caught bits and pieces here and there, for some reason it was on Saturday that I actually sat down and watched much of it.
If you have seen it, a key part of the plot is where Will Smith is piloting a Marine fighter jet and fleeing an alien spaceship. As the alien ship is closing in, and Will is running out of gas, he suddenly deploys a parachute that covers the alien ship, blinding the alien, causing him to crash.
Sunday was the designated day for Ashley and me to move much of her apartment, including her bed, back home. Ashley has been living in Raleigh much of the time for the past two years as she is completing her master’s degree at NC State.
I still don’t have a pickup, but I have moved up to a Ford Windstar van. If you take the seats out, it’s almost as good as a pickup.
Recently I needed to get my lawnmower serviced, so I took out the seats, backed the van into the ditch in front of my house, and with a couple of boards, loaded her up. The lawnmower repair shop said that was the first time they had unloaded one from a van. Worked for me.
Well, Sunday we got up to Raleigh. Ashley has a double bed, and we brought the mattress down and got it in the van with little problem. Then came the box springs. As it was going to be challenging to get them both in, we took the more flexible mattress out and put the box springs in. It was quickly clear that both would not fit at the same time.
Fortunately, we had some wire in the van. We would wire down the mattress to the roof of the van.
I must point out that my daughter began her college career in nuclear physics, so she has some knowledge of the laws of physics. She also had not completely wiped out what she remembers as a traumatic experience, trying to get the plywood home.
I had not forgotten the plywood lesson either, and told her we would go down non-interstate roads where we could go 40 or less, as the bulky, heavy mattress would not be likely to get wind under it and fly up like the more wing-like plywood.
I assured her that fortune favors the bold. I also reminded her that if an alien spaceship locked on our rear, we could speed up and blind them with the mattress.
She continued to have doubts, but trusted her father.
We had not gone a mile when suddenly the top tie down that I had tightened slid to the rear of the rails it was mounted on. The suddenly light as a feather mattress had taken wing. I searched the rear view mirror for the alien spaceship which surely must have triggered the emergency release of the mattress. Alas, it must have been a malfunctioning emergency release switch.
No alien spaceship and fortunately no closely following cars. The wire may not have kept the mattress from seeking freedom from the top of the van, but it maintained its hold on the handles of the mattress. So we drug the mattress some distance as I reacted to new lessons in physics.
A rather nice young man in a Jeep stopped to offer help getting the mattress back on the roof, but a rather red-faced father said he thought we could handle it.
Marilyn’s original advice was to save the mattress for the next trip, so we took it back upstairs, and brought it home later that day.
I was nervous about alien spaceships all the way home, though.