The Agrinautica

   Last Tuesday was the solstice. I used to call it the summer solstice but now it's the winter solstice for me. Websites like Timeanddate.com refer to it as "the June solstice," but I don't terribly like the sound of that even if it's always in June. Northern Solstice I suppose would be most accurate word for it, since what it marks in actuality is the most northernmost zenith of the sun, when the sun is directly overhead the Tropic of Cancer somewhere for a moment before starting its long corkscrew back south.

   As it happens this moment was at 8:24am my time, this past Tuesday. I believe it was at 22:24 Monday, Greenwich Mean Time, and actually occurred somewhere East of Australia (well three and a half time zones east).
   I found it kind of neat that unlike events such as midnight, New Years, which rolls around the world hour by hour, the moment of solstice is of course the same all the way around the world, since it is a specific moment in time. And yet despite this, it occurred for me on Tuesday but for all of America it was Monday at the time.

   I've found myself really looking forward to the solstice ever since, well, the equinox. Practically counting down the days. There are a few reasons for this. (1) Being as I work in an agricultural industry in which much turns on the season, yet I'm not quite familiar with when the seasons begin and end here in Australia, it is my clear signpost to the progression of the seasons;
   (2) I'm finding the Australian winter really depressing! In the United States winter is bracketed and punctuated by holidays -- Halloween kind of heralds in the season of crispness, then just wwhen you need another pick-me-up there's the warm cozy over eating and family time of Thanksgiving, and then in the deepest darkest of winter there's Christmas and New Years ... and in Southern California anyway pretty much from there on out you forget it's winter even though I guess it continues till Easter (:
   But here in Australia Christmas and New Years fall weirdly in the middle of summer and the whole long stretch of actual winter is completely devoid of big holidays to look forward to. It's really making me realize how much having holidays to look forward to distracts from the lengthening nights and shortening days. And so, like some kind of "gosh dang pagan" I find myself fixating on the solstice.

   Also this solstice happened to coincide with a full moon, which was kind of neat. I admire the clock-like ticking around of the moon every thirty days and the precise angular movements of the solstice, though I'd hate to be mistaken for some kind of hippie who attaches some sort of voodoo "spirituality" to these occurrences. Perhaps more on this in a future entry!


PS: Unfortunately I'm falling a fair bit behind in this "30 in 30" thing. To be fair ever since Monday when I posted the last one I had something to do immediately after work and just literally didn't have time to sit and write something. I suppose I'll just continue after the end of June to try to get 30 entries out as soon as possible.


Totally Unrelated Pic of the Day

This one didn't quite make the cut in the Guinea entry but I kind of liked it. The teenage girls of the village are doing their homework on a balcony. Even in remote African villages, homework happens!

   I have found driving in Australia to be fundamentally somewhat different from driving in California. Beyond the obvious driving on the left side of the road thing.

   In California, on highways with two or more lanes in each direction, such as The Five (California's main North-South artery) for most of its length, on paper the fast (left) lane is for passing only. I hear in other states they actually enforce this and people abide it and I assume all aspects of life are therefore better in these states and people wake up with a smile plastered to their face every day as a consequence. However, that is not the case in California. In California people get in the "fast" lane and sit there. Even if they are going the speed limit or even less. They expect slower moving cars in front of them to move to the slow lane to let them by and generally enforce this by tailgating, honking, light flashing, and/or generally being obnoxious and probably swearing a lot in the confines of their own car for the assumed benefit of their target. Long queus of cars form in the fast lane when someone won't move over, possibly because said front car driver is saying to himself "well I'm going the speed limit gosh dang it so I'm not getting out of the way."
   And that's another thing. The speed limit. Even on paper the speed limit is basically a suggestion, though I don't think they explicitly say you can go faster. Generally on the 5 the flow of traffic is around 80mph even when the speed limit is 65. But because everyone has a different interpretation of how much leeway they have, you are always passing and being passed.

   Now in contrast, in Australia the speed limit seems to be almost always 100kph, aka 62mph in the One True System. This speed seems a bit slow on the highways, and crazy fast on the narrow two lane farm roads winding through the gum forest. And on those narrow farm roads people generally DO go zipping around at 62mph, which frankly terrifies me. But on the major highways... people STILL go exactly 100kph. You see, the thing is, in Australia they apparently enforce a strict interpretation of their speed limits. I've heard of people getting ticketed for going 102. So everyone gets on the road, and get up to exactly 100 and sits there right on it. As a result, you aren't passed nor do you pass anyone else generally once you get going, the cars just move along the highway in line like they're on a conveyor belt.

   And generally everyone does stay in the slow lane util they're passing, but I found another thing happening. I am often turning on to the highway from small farm roads, so I need to quickly accelerate to 100 as cars are zipping by. So as not to impede everyone else, I found myself moving immediately to the fast lane (which I started doing after seeing other people doing it), until I get to 100 and THEN I move into the slow lane and move along with everyone else. I think other people do this too. Weird how the de facto use of lanes doesn't stay as intended.