http://hraun.vedur.is/ja/englishweb/gps/predorb/skropred.html

I’ve fallen off the back of trucks with a 300 lb copier coming down right behind me, and managed to grasp that fleeting hand hold and swing out of the way as the copier destroyed itself where I would have landed otherwise. As I noted to my boss when he inquired if I was injured… “you don’t do 20 years in the Navy without learning how to fall down with out killing yourself”

So, the other day, when Carl apologized for speaking of me in the past tense, I thought it was prophetic since that very morning I had done the one legged scootie-scoot across the kitchen floor on top of a floor mat while trying to get coffee. Spider Monkey skills saved my arse on that one also. I came withing 4 inches of bashing my head.

And today, I ran across a “doggie got to go now, eh, this is good” spot and found myself in the one legged scootie-scoot maneuver yet again. This time, “countering a misplaced skate” skill came into play and the dog got chastised for his impatience.

To be honest, during the way back when that I mentioned earlier. My friends and I found an abandoned house in a sand-pit. It had been a residence back before the sand pit property had been sold for fill-dirt. With no windows or furniture, and half a door, it was a great place to get drunk and skate around what once was the living room on the now wooden floor. I’m sure that motor skill training helped some, as we spent most of the time trying to knock each other over. I also found out that if you win, and you have managed to knock your friend over and he decides to take exception to it later, after you have your tennis shoes on, running flat out into a dead-fall is not a good idea. It took me 20 minutes to crawl up through those branches and briers. He didn’t pay me back for knocking him down while skating. He sat there and laughed his arse off at my predicament.

Okay, enough memory lane shit.

Shallow quakes eh? Ponder this. The closer to the surface you get, the cooler the crust is. Cooler crust is less mailable and responds to strain by cracking rather than bending. That 18 mm/yr (I’m 18, and I don’t know what I want!) builds up over time. As noted in “The Dead Zone” post from a while back, I think that at depth, the crust is still to hot to have many strain related quakes. (hence “The Dead Zone”). Those surface quakes may be a harbinger…. or not.

Your mileage may vary.