In just under one month, I’ll be participating in a real, in-person road race. Amazing! In celebration of the non-virtual nature of this run, I’m raising money for Stride for Stride, a great running charity. I’m hoping you’ll support me in this endeavor.

Stride for Stride works to make races more inclusive and more diverse by buying race bibs for immigrant, BIPOC, and low-income runners. Everyone should have the chance to enjoy the thrill of finishing a race, and Stride for Stride works to make that possible. Stride for Stride also provides food assistance to low-income families via the Heart to Cart program, which buys supermarket gift cards for those facing food insecurity.

I hope you’ll consider pitching in. You’ll have my gratitude if you do. You can make a donation right here.

Thanks for reading! Your regular absurdity will return on Monday.

Many years ago, I linked to Jürgen Henn’s 11foot8.com. That’s an entire site dedicated to a noticeably low bridge in Durham, North Carolina, one which oblivious truck drivers frequently fail to clear. A couple years after writing about the bridge, I found myself in Durham, and captured some photographs of the ill-fated area. Despite the fact that this picture looks like I was Photoshopped in, I promise, I was really there:

Alas, I didn’t get to witness any vehicular carnage while I was on-site.

Apparently, in 2019, the bridge was finally raised by eight inches. Raising the bridge has likely reduced the frequency of incidents, but it hasn’t solved the problem fully. Just three weeks later, the first collision with the new bridge happened.

A few weeks ago, 11foot8.com posted a new video featuring a “perfect peel”, where the roof of a box truck was stripped off as if the whole thing was built to do just that. It’s terribly satisfying to watch, and I encourage you to do so. Here’s a screengrab:

Here in Boston, we have a crosstown parkway called Storrow Drive. It features several low bridges which cause similar problems, often for students moving around the city in rental trucks. Years ago, I managed to capture a stuck truck mere moments after it had gotten wedged:

[Photo courtesy of P. Kafasis]

While Boston lacks its own site devoted entirely to this phenomenon, local news blog Universal Hub does track the incidents, which we refer to as “Storrowings”. Each occurrence is a bad day for one hapless driver, but there are many, many signs and warnings aimed at preventing this problem. As such, it’s hard to muster up too much sympathy. The innocent folks who find themselves snarled in the resulting traffic are more deserving of pity.

Of course, the fact that these bridges keep taking down trucks tells us that the signs just aren’t enough to prevent the problem. I’d love it if more innovative solutions were tested, such as the SoftStop system from Australia. When needed, it showers down a curtain of water so a ”sign” can be projected right in front of drivers.

For now, though, I expect to see these bridges continuing to feast.

In January of 2020, I moved to a new address. In the year and a half since that move, I’ve received a bizarre stream of envelopes in the mail. I’ve been documenting them since shortly after they began, and now I’m going to share the mystery of Terrys (sic) Tropical Paradise. Perhaps someone out there can crack this case.

I believe this all began back in February of 2020. It was around that time that I received the first envelope addressed to “Terrys Tropical Paradise” (no apostrophe!). I found this very strange, but I simply tossed it in the recycling bin. It was only upon receiving the second letter that I started documenting things. That second item was received March 31st, 2020, and can be seen below:

I’ve removed my street address, but this is otherwise unmodified. That’s all there was. It’s a single sheet, with an address (visible through the envelope and used to get the item here), and a tiny bit of text. That envelope contains no return address or other identifying information.

After those two pieces of mail, things went quiet in the Terrys department for many months. Perhaps the global pandemic threw a wrench in things. However, in November, I suddenly received two envelopes in one day:

The very next month, I received another two. I also had better lighting for my scans:

These particular letters came on my mother’s birthday. Is that a clue? No, of course it’s not. That would be ridiculous.

Things then stalled for another three months, before picking back up in force. Since March, I’ve received at least one mailing each month. Each envelope contains just one sheet of paper, and the only thing that changes are the numbers and letters in the upper left. I’ve reproduced those below:

March 2021 (Received 2021-03-12):
A9807550    B02753ER.DAT

April 2021 (Received 2021-04-19):
A9807550    B02753ER.DAT
A9807550    B02753ER.DAT
A9807550    B02753ER.DAT

May 2021 (Received 2021-05-17):
A9807550    N02809FA.DAT

June 2021 (Received 2021-06-10):
A9807550    I02102BU.DAT

July 2021 (Received 2021-07-06):
A9807550    B00219ER.DAT

This is surely all automated, judging both by the contents of these envelopes, and that missing apostrophe in the name. The unchanging A9807550 is probably an identifier, like an account number, while the .DAT extension on the second half suggests different data files. But why isn’t there any actual content? Even if there were a “Terry’s Tropical Paradise” located here, what purpose would these mailings serve? I’m at a loss.

Searching the web reveals nothing that seems relevant. I’ve found a “Terry’s Tropical Paradise” in Jacksonville, Arkansas, which I suppose is more tropical than Boston, but is still not a place I would call tropical. I can’t figure out what that business is, however, and the phone number listed rings once and then tells me it’s been “disconnected or is no longer in service”.

So that’s where things stand. Every so often, I check the mail, and get another envelope for TTP, and another laugh. Much like life, I don’t know if I’ll ever understand what’s happening here, but I sure would like to.

A few weeks back, I noted Jeff Bezos’s plan to go to space with his brother. In contrast to his appalling yacht purchase(s), I gave this plan a somewhat flip nod of approval, stating “[i]f we’re going to have billionaires, that’s how you do it.” Space exploration is cool, and certainly a better use of purchase than yet another yacht, with all its attendant problems.

But a far better model for how billionaires should use their money is available in the form of Bezos’s former wife, Mackenzie Scott¹. Following the couple’s divorce, Scott took sole possession of tens of billions of dollars in Amazon stock. She quickly began giving that wealth away. In just two years since signing the Giving Pledge, Scott has donated more than $8.5 billion to hundreds of worthy non-profit organizations.

These donations are going to have incalculable positive effects, and from the post about her most recent donations, it’s clear Scott is far from done. That post also notes that Scott wants to keep the focus on the organizations themselves, like the Girls First Fund, Muslim Advocates, and Results for America. However, if society isn’t going to prevent the creation of billionaires, we should at least applaud those who really are using their ludicrous power to benefit others so dramatically.

Footnotes:

1. The story of Scott’s wealth seems to be too often summarized as simply being the result of her divorce from one of the richest men in the world. More than just a jilted ex-wife who got rich when her husband cheated on her, Scott was with Amazon from the beginning, and her money seems as well earned as Bezos’s. ↩︎