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February 9, 2012 9:49 AM Subscribe
Tumbleweeds (SLYT)
Tumbling tumbleweave
posted by hermitosis
Girl you lost your weave
posted by phirleh at 10:07 AM on February 9, 2012 [1 favorite]
posted by hermitosis
Girl you lost your weave
posted by phirleh at 10:07 AM on February 9, 2012 [1 favorite]
That was sort of lovely.
posted by -t at 10:16 AM on February 9, 2012 [2 favorites]
posted by -t at 10:16 AM on February 9, 2012 [2 favorites]
I was in Arizona with my folks last month, driving out in the desert south of Phoenix. All of a sudden this tumbleweed the size of a FREAKING CAR started lumbering right down the road at us. My dad swerved onto the shoulder and stopped the truck and we all just looked at each other and said Whoa.
posted by mudpuppie at 10:19 AM on February 9, 2012 [1 favorite]
posted by mudpuppie at 10:19 AM on February 9, 2012 [1 favorite]
I always thought it was neat that since the 19th century there have been farms that have supplied tumbleweeds, first to rodeo shows, then to the new cinema industry, and now mostly to theme parties.
posted by Blasdelb at 10:36 AM on February 9, 2012 [2 favorites]
posted by Blasdelb at 10:36 AM on February 9, 2012 [2 favorites]
I like the one at 1:06 where it nearly knocks over the fake tombstone.
posted by aubilenon at 10:44 AM on February 9, 2012 [1 favorite]
posted by aubilenon at 10:44 AM on February 9, 2012 [1 favorite]
Via AskMe!
Wow... no, I didn't get it from there (obviously should have searched for 'tumbleweed' as well as 'tumbleweeds' when I did the search for doubles)
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 11:00 AM on February 9, 2012
Wow... no, I didn't get it from there (obviously should have searched for 'tumbleweed' as well as 'tumbleweeds' when I did the search for doubles)
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 11:00 AM on February 9, 2012
Where I grew up in Eastern Washington there is a stretch of freeway between Benton City and Richland that turns into tumbleweed dodging game when the wind blows. Once I lost a headlight to a tumbleweed taller than my car.
For hard mode take highway 240 from Richland to Vernita bridge and dodge the radioactive tumbleweeds.
posted by the_artificer at 11:05 AM on February 9, 2012 [3 favorites]
For hard mode take highway 240 from Richland to Vernita bridge and dodge the radioactive tumbleweeds.
posted by the_artificer at 11:05 AM on February 9, 2012 [3 favorites]
What's funny is that the russian thistle, kali tragus, which is pretty much the canonical tumbleweed and accounts for the majority of them, didn't exist in North America before about 1870.
The Old West as we know it is a complex myth that's somewhat distant from the reality.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 11:11 AM on February 9, 2012 [8 favorites]
The Old West as we know it is a complex myth that's somewhat distant from the reality.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 11:11 AM on February 9, 2012 [8 favorites]
That was utterly soporific. Also, I was slightly dismayed to find that the Sons of the Pioneers' song wasn't on the Lebowski soundtrack which itself is rather ghastly at points.
posted by obscurator at 11:28 AM on February 9, 2012
posted by obscurator at 11:28 AM on February 9, 2012
This is one of those things that seems weirder and weirder the longer you watch it. The tumbleweed begins to take on this ridiculous totemic significance.
I grew up in Arizona and it gets to the point where you don't even notice them anymore. Seeing so many of them in so many different contexts made me grateful that humankind's life cycle doesn't depend on us drying up into brittle husks when we die and rolling around all over the landscape scattering our seed.
posted by hermitosis at 11:33 AM on February 9, 2012 [1 favorite]
I grew up in Arizona and it gets to the point where you don't even notice them anymore. Seeing so many of them in so many different contexts made me grateful that humankind's life cycle doesn't depend on us drying up into brittle husks when we die and rolling around all over the landscape scattering our seed.
posted by hermitosis at 11:33 AM on February 9, 2012 [1 favorite]
Are you sure it doesn't?
posted by Kirth Gerson at 11:52 AM on February 9, 2012 [1 favorite]
posted by Kirth Gerson at 11:52 AM on February 9, 2012 [1 favorite]
We're not dependent upon it, it's just a lot of fun.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 11:59 AM on February 9, 2012 [1 favorite]
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 11:59 AM on February 9, 2012 [1 favorite]
Tumbleweeds made for some fine tinder at campsites when I lived in Colorado, though most found it too dry and volatile for fire starters. On the plus side, it cost nothing, was abundant, easy to find and would conveniently show up unannounced. Like an unemployed relative at dinnertime, only more useful and less needy.
posted by Phud at 12:02 PM on February 9, 2012 [2 favorites]
posted by Phud at 12:02 PM on February 9, 2012 [2 favorites]
Years ago; when I lived in Rio Rancho, New Mexico, I witnessed a tumbleweed tornado.
I was driving down 528, near the Intel plant and there's a part of the road that curves around and dips down into the Rio Grande basin. It passes a sort of bowl in the landscape that would catch years worth of tumbleweeds, trash, any ephemera that would blow around in the spring winds.
That day, there was a stationary dust devil that was churning in the bowl and picking up every tumbleweed that had been deposited there. Hundreds of tumbleweeds were circling around the vortex and rising up at least 50 ft up into the air. I had to pull over to watch and pretty soon there was a good crowd of others that were doing the same.
After a few minutes, the dust devil ran out of steam and the sky began to rain tumbleweeds. We all scurried back into our cars to avoid getting clobbered by tumbleweeds.
I see plenty lots of tumbleweeds rolling along and even an occasional dust devil with a few swirling around every Spring when the winds start howling. It's also great fun to play dodgeball on the roadways to avoid them as they blow across. However, I haven't seen any more tumbleweed tornados.
posted by jabo at 12:03 PM on February 9, 2012 [3 favorites]
I was driving down 528, near the Intel plant and there's a part of the road that curves around and dips down into the Rio Grande basin. It passes a sort of bowl in the landscape that would catch years worth of tumbleweeds, trash, any ephemera that would blow around in the spring winds.
That day, there was a stationary dust devil that was churning in the bowl and picking up every tumbleweed that had been deposited there. Hundreds of tumbleweeds were circling around the vortex and rising up at least 50 ft up into the air. I had to pull over to watch and pretty soon there was a good crowd of others that were doing the same.
After a few minutes, the dust devil ran out of steam and the sky began to rain tumbleweeds. We all scurried back into our cars to avoid getting clobbered by tumbleweeds.
I see plenty lots of tumbleweeds rolling along and even an occasional dust devil with a few swirling around every Spring when the winds start howling. It's also great fun to play dodgeball on the roadways to avoid them as they blow across. However, I haven't seen any more tumbleweed tornados.
posted by jabo at 12:03 PM on February 9, 2012 [3 favorites]
Think how spectacular(ly dangerous) it would be if you sprayed flammable liquid on a bunch, lit them and released them into the wind on a moonless night.
posted by jamjam at 12:09 PM on February 9, 2012
posted by jamjam at 12:09 PM on February 9, 2012
(I like it!)
posted by usonian at 12:26 PM on February 9, 2012 [1 favorite]
smiling now!
posted by tarantula at 12:31 PM on February 9, 2012 [1 favorite]
posted by tarantula at 12:31 PM on February 9, 2012 [1 favorite]
"I was driving down 528, near the Intel plant and there's a part of the road that curves around and dips down into the Rio Grande basin. It passes a sort of bowl in the landscape that would catch years worth of tumbleweeds, trash, any ephemera that would blow around in the spring winds. "
That was years ago. There's a huge mall there now.
If you haven't been back here since then, it's really weird. I lived in Rio Rancho from 1986-1988, possibly when you were there, and like many people I drove down that hill from Rio Rancho into Albuquerque on 528 all the time. In fact, I recently found a negative I'd taken through the windshield for some reason and while the photo isn't interesting in itself, it's pretty amazing to look at now, given how much that's changed.
In fact, I just found the two photos (there were two, I just discovered) and I composited them together. And here is the Google Street View (I just made a screenshot) from approximately the same location recently. That's just the westbound lanes by themselves, they changed that road and Coors Blvd all around, actually.
The other thing I noticed when I saw that photo again a couple of years ago, was all that empty land up to the mountain and to the north up against the Sandia Pueblo. That's all filled now. It's amazing and disturbing how much of the city just climbs up the mountain today.
The whole West Mesa over here is something I can't get accustomed to. When I moved here from Austin in 2004, after living there for eight years and having not lived in Albuquerque since 1991, it just plain freaked me out when I came over here the first time. The mall hadn't been built when I was last here. All that empty space where you saw those tumbleweeds is a huge mall and all those outlying mall type stores like Best Buy and a lot of traffic. Cibola High School sat there in the middle of the mesa by itself as recently as 1991. Now it's across the street from a mall. And the construction over here has that new western US suburban character. It looked just like Austin's suburbs to me, and not like Albuquerque. Of course, when you lived in Rio Rancho, it was probably about 30K people. Now it's more like 120K, more than Santa Fe, and will probably become the second largest city in the state soon.
And, by the way, the Intel plant has just gotten bigger and bigger. I remember in the 80s when they were first talking about building a new fab there for about 2 billion dollars. I don't know how many new fabs they've built since then, but it's been several. It is an enormously huge semiconductor manufacturing facility.
So, yeah. That big bowl full of tumbleweeds is dense urban/suburban city now. You can drive west on the mesa toward the volcanoes and the small airport and it's empty mesa like it used to be here. But probably not for much longer. When my mom went to high school in the early 60s, there was such a thing people called the "East Mesa" and it was like that for miles and miles away from the mountain. Her high school, Manzano, had just been built and was out by itself on a dirt road.
I've got so much family history here, and basically almost fifty years of memories, that it's really weird for me how Albuquerque is simultaneously deeply familiar to me and deeply unfamiliar all at the same time.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 12:55 PM on February 9, 2012 [3 favorites]
That was years ago. There's a huge mall there now.
If you haven't been back here since then, it's really weird. I lived in Rio Rancho from 1986-1988, possibly when you were there, and like many people I drove down that hill from Rio Rancho into Albuquerque on 528 all the time. In fact, I recently found a negative I'd taken through the windshield for some reason and while the photo isn't interesting in itself, it's pretty amazing to look at now, given how much that's changed.
In fact, I just found the two photos (there were two, I just discovered) and I composited them together. And here is the Google Street View (I just made a screenshot) from approximately the same location recently. That's just the westbound lanes by themselves, they changed that road and Coors Blvd all around, actually.
The other thing I noticed when I saw that photo again a couple of years ago, was all that empty land up to the mountain and to the north up against the Sandia Pueblo. That's all filled now. It's amazing and disturbing how much of the city just climbs up the mountain today.
The whole West Mesa over here is something I can't get accustomed to. When I moved here from Austin in 2004, after living there for eight years and having not lived in Albuquerque since 1991, it just plain freaked me out when I came over here the first time. The mall hadn't been built when I was last here. All that empty space where you saw those tumbleweeds is a huge mall and all those outlying mall type stores like Best Buy and a lot of traffic. Cibola High School sat there in the middle of the mesa by itself as recently as 1991. Now it's across the street from a mall. And the construction over here has that new western US suburban character. It looked just like Austin's suburbs to me, and not like Albuquerque. Of course, when you lived in Rio Rancho, it was probably about 30K people. Now it's more like 120K, more than Santa Fe, and will probably become the second largest city in the state soon.
And, by the way, the Intel plant has just gotten bigger and bigger. I remember in the 80s when they were first talking about building a new fab there for about 2 billion dollars. I don't know how many new fabs they've built since then, but it's been several. It is an enormously huge semiconductor manufacturing facility.
So, yeah. That big bowl full of tumbleweeds is dense urban/suburban city now. You can drive west on the mesa toward the volcanoes and the small airport and it's empty mesa like it used to be here. But probably not for much longer. When my mom went to high school in the early 60s, there was such a thing people called the "East Mesa" and it was like that for miles and miles away from the mountain. Her high school, Manzano, had just been built and was out by itself on a dirt road.
I've got so much family history here, and basically almost fifty years of memories, that it's really weird for me how Albuquerque is simultaneously deeply familiar to me and deeply unfamiliar all at the same time.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 12:55 PM on February 9, 2012 [3 favorites]
If somebody told me that one day I'd watch a 2 and a half minute video composed of tumbling tumbleweeds and I would enjoy the whole thing I wouldn't have believed them.
posted by Defenestrator at 1:01 PM on February 9, 2012 [1 favorite]
posted by Defenestrator at 1:01 PM on February 9, 2012 [1 favorite]
That was utterly soporific.
Well, yep. But ya know pardner, life's like that at times. Best you just keep moseyin and don't let it worry you none.
posted by Twang at 1:47 PM on February 9, 2012 [2 favorites]
Well, yep. But ya know pardner, life's like that at times. Best you just keep moseyin and don't let it worry you none.
posted by Twang at 1:47 PM on February 9, 2012 [2 favorites]
Once we were driving from Calgary to Saskatoon for a gig. It was maybe in October, and this stretch of Hwy 7 runs NE all the way to Saskatoon. There was a strong SE wind, and for most of the trip there was a constant parade of tumbleweeds across the road. Sometimes a couple, sometimes whole herds of them, running across my field of view from right to left... At first it was kind of soothing, but after an hour it becomes harder and harder to stop yourself from overcorrecting into the ditch.
It would be cool if you could set a whole field of them on fire, though.
posted by sneebler at 2:48 PM on February 9, 2012 [1 favorite]
It would be cool if you could set a whole field of them on fire, though.
posted by sneebler at 2:48 PM on February 9, 2012 [1 favorite]
Ivan Fyodorovich - I just found the two photos … and I composited them together
Wow, that's the spot of the tumbleweed tornado all right (off to the right and back uphill a little more). I lived in Rio Rancho for about 18 months and left in 1994 when we sold our house and moved back up to Santa Fe. Couldn't wait to get out because of all the development you mentioned.
We lived in River's Edge 3 which was still under development. You could walk to the end of our street and have an unobstructed stroll down to the Bosque (the woods along the Rio Grande River). Part of that walk was over land cleared for the future rows of houses that were going in.
I noticed a profusion of little green grasses that were sprouting up all over that land. I dug some up to plant in our own barren yard and faithfully watered it for a few weeks but it didn't take to transplanting. It did grow to full size over the empty lots. It was tumbleweed.
posted by jabo at 8:40 PM on February 9, 2012 [1 favorite]
Wow, that's the spot of the tumbleweed tornado all right (off to the right and back uphill a little more). I lived in Rio Rancho for about 18 months and left in 1994 when we sold our house and moved back up to Santa Fe. Couldn't wait to get out because of all the development you mentioned.
We lived in River's Edge 3 which was still under development. You could walk to the end of our street and have an unobstructed stroll down to the Bosque (the woods along the Rio Grande River). Part of that walk was over land cleared for the future rows of houses that were going in.
I noticed a profusion of little green grasses that were sprouting up all over that land. I dug some up to plant in our own barren yard and faithfully watered it for a few weeks but it didn't take to transplanting. It did grow to full size over the empty lots. It was tumbleweed.
posted by jabo at 8:40 PM on February 9, 2012 [1 favorite]
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posted by Foci for Analysis at 9:52 AM on February 9, 2012 [1 favorite]