Here's something you might be interested in.
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
A roll up a gravity hill
Mattster:
In my ’50s cruising days, after hitting Oscar’s Drive In on El Cajon Boulevard, one stop we would always make was at a “magnetic hill” where steel cans appeared to roll uphill. I believe it was called Merlin Drive, but it might have been somewhere near the beach. Am I remembering this right?
— Sleepless in Spring Valley
“Magnetic hills,” also called “gravity hills,” are a worldwide phenomenon, and San Diego has had its fair share of mystical slopes over the years. I don’t know if Merlin Drive (I assume you mean the road in Lemon Grove) ever had the reputation as a gravity hill, but it might have back in the ’50s. Nowadays, the best gravity hill in San Diego is actually a freeway off-ramp. If you exit 805 to Sorrento Valley and leave your car in neutral at the bottom of the ramp, you will roll back up the ramp while you wait for the light to change. It’s creepy.
Folksy origins for gravity hills usually involve some paranormal activity. A popular backstory used for a lot of them is that, 50/60/70 or however many years ago, a school bus full of kids stalled out on the hill and the children all tried to push the bus. Something went tragically wrong and all of the rugrats died horrible deaths beneath the wheels of the bus. Forever after, the ghosts of the children reach out from beyond the grave and push unwitting drivers up the hill. Other popular explanations involve “gravitational anomalies” that somehow negate the attraction between physical bodies; and that’s a quantum mechanical attraction, not a Tom Jones kind of attraction, for all you dirty birds out there.
Sadly, there are neither ghosts nor strange attractors at work behind the gravity hill phenomenon. It’s just an optical illusion that makes the slope of the hill appear to run in the opposite direction. Usually, the miscue comes from a weird perspective on the horizon caused by a treeline, buildings, or something else that interferes with a normal frame of visual reference. It becomes impossible to determine what’s “level” by visual cues alone. In the case of the Sorrento Valley off-ramp, the road actually turns upward just a little bit at the very end of the ramp; but because of the swooping, curving geometry of the freeway system, it’s difficult to tell just by looking at it.
There’s another freeway segment that seems to defy gravity, but it’s not as well known to cars because nobody ever stops in the middle of the freeway to try rolling up a hill. The stretch of I-8 west between Descanso and the Willows Road exit is open to bicycles and many a rider is familiar with the “hill” that can be climbed at 25 or 30 mph with relative ease. If it’s not outright downward, it’s at least flat.
Here's something you might be interested in.
A roll up a gravity hill
A roll up a gravity hill
Mattster:
In my ’50s cruising days, after hitting Oscar’s Drive In on El Cajon Boulevard, one stop we would always make was at a “magnetic hill” where steel cans appeared to roll uphill. I believe it was called Merlin Drive, but it might have been somewhere near the beach. Am I remembering this right?
— Sleepless in Spring Valley
“Magnetic hills,” also called “gravity hills,” are a worldwide phenomenon, and San Diego has had its fair share of mystical slopes over the years. I don’t know if Merlin Drive (I assume you mean the road in Lemon Grove) ever had the reputation as a gravity hill, but it might have back in the ’50s. Nowadays, the best gravity hill in San Diego is actually a freeway off-ramp. If you exit 805 to Sorrento Valley and leave your car in neutral at the bottom of the ramp, you will roll back up the ramp while you wait for the light to change. It’s creepy.
Folksy origins for gravity hills usually involve some paranormal activity. A popular backstory used for a lot of them is that, 50/60/70 or however many years ago, a school bus full of kids stalled out on the hill and the children all tried to push the bus. Something went tragically wrong and all of the rugrats died horrible deaths beneath the wheels of the bus. Forever after, the ghosts of the children reach out from beyond the grave and push unwitting drivers up the hill. Other popular explanations involve “gravitational anomalies” that somehow negate the attraction between physical bodies; and that’s a quantum mechanical attraction, not a Tom Jones kind of attraction, for all you dirty birds out there.
Sadly, there are neither ghosts nor strange attractors at work behind the gravity hill phenomenon. It’s just an optical illusion that makes the slope of the hill appear to run in the opposite direction. Usually, the miscue comes from a weird perspective on the horizon caused by a treeline, buildings, or something else that interferes with a normal frame of visual reference. It becomes impossible to determine what’s “level” by visual cues alone. In the case of the Sorrento Valley off-ramp, the road actually turns upward just a little bit at the very end of the ramp; but because of the swooping, curving geometry of the freeway system, it’s difficult to tell just by looking at it.
There’s another freeway segment that seems to defy gravity, but it’s not as well known to cars because nobody ever stops in the middle of the freeway to try rolling up a hill. The stretch of I-8 west between Descanso and the Willows Road exit is open to bicycles and many a rider is familiar with the “hill” that can be climbed at 25 or 30 mph with relative ease. If it’s not outright downward, it’s at least flat.
Comments