April 28, 2009

A (Sort Of) New Dock Part II – Laser Tales

At the end of last week’s action-packed episode, we left our heroes, Tom and Mike, staring thoughtfully at a big heap of alleged dock sections, a fairly strange assortment of poles, augers, and connectors, some items we couldn’t quite identify, and one brand new laser level.

Important safety tip – don’t ever stare thoughtfully at a laser level.

The idea behind our foray into 21st Century laser technology was that we were planning to be a little more meticulous putting the dock together than we have in years past, when the contours of our finished work served as sort of idealized prototypes for the ride designers at Cedar Point. We figured that something that looked as complicated as this little laser thingie had to be good.

I should point out that the only reason I own a laser level is that my son gave it to me for Father’s Day a couple of years ago. I have always thought it would be incredibly cool to have my very own laser level, or for that matter anything that had a “laser” involved with it in any way.

You see, when I was a kid lasers were the stuff of science fiction. Mounted in the belly of an Antarian Battle Saucer, they could destroy a continent or blast a Rigelian Mining Frigate clean out of orbit. They were always the weapons of choice for space-suited heroes who needed to deal with the vicious Klenthar Beasts on Alpha Persei Nine.

Then during my first year in college, I had an opportunity to visit a laboratory at the University of Notre Dame, where they were conducting ground-breaking research on one of the earliest working lasers. It was a huge, exciting room filled with humming boxes, prisms, mirrors and grad students charging around in white lab coats and dark goggles.

The end result of all this activity was a thin red beam of light that you could see when you blew smoke across it, zigzagging around the room between all the mirrors and ending up in a tiny dot on a piece of tissue paper. One of the goggle wearers proudly told me that if they could just find a way to boost the power by seven or eight orders of magnitude, they could maybe – just maybe -  blow a hole right through that nasty old paper!

At the time I was pretty impressed with how science was catching up with science fiction, even though I recall thinking that these folks were probably at least a couple of research grants away from being able to bring down a charging Klenthar Beast.

In any case, I don’t recall any science fiction author ever incorporating into his view of the future the idea that laser technology would some day end up in the key fobs of middle school students, enabling them to hilariously make their friends think that they are being targeted by a sniper.

So here Tom and I sat, looking from the dock heap, to the laser level, to the lake, to the instructions that came with the laser level, and back to the dock heap. We were both wearing our red “laser level safety glasses,” and we had already lost a fair amount of time marveling over how those glasses made Tom’s red truck look yellow. It was time to get down to business.

After carefully putting the instructions back in the carrying case (so we would know where to find them just in case we ever decided to read them), we set up a small tripod to hold the laser level, carefully adjusting it to give us a true reading. Then we invested a couple of beers in a thorough debate over the best strategy for taking laser readings and using them to produce the perfect dock.

Finally, armed with our plan, we put on our waders, grabbed the tripod and headed out to the water, where we discovered that even with the special glasses, in bright sunshine you can not really see a laser level well enough to do you much good.

Did you know that, with a little creativity, a laser level in a dark room works even better than a laser pointer to drive a cat completely psychotic?

Copyright ©2009 Michael Ball. Distributed exclusively by North Star Writers Group.

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