By Robert Emslie
Cell phones have added a lot to our driving experience- providing both security and distraction while on the road. They’ve also engendered a new highway game that I like to call- spot the fake tree. Ohh, there’s one!
Image source: [rherring via Flickr.com]
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Jeff Glucker
damn those things.
Reminds me of a century plant stalk. However, from the looks of this photograph, there isn't a century plant within thousands of miles. They live in the desert, they're agaves, what you make tequila from. Get this- here in the desert, we have fake pine tree towers. Guess what? No pine trees in the desert, they live in the mountains. Go figure.
at first when I read this, I though to myself, "A Century plant? Like the one in Oshawa, Ont.? And what's a stalk of a plant, something else I don't know???"
Oh… not an assembly plant, an actual living plant. Guess I need to pick up this coffee-in-the-morning thing I keep hearing about.
Yeah, a real plant. Here's what they look like. They'll grow for years, then one spring they send the stalk thing up, it blooms, then the plant dies. The stalk grows like an inch or more a day, then that's it. Bizarre. http://www.desertusa.com/feb97/du_pcentury.html
They also live in the center divider on the Merritt parkway at the NY/CT border. Hard to spot because of the cell towers on them though.
I believe that this is taken on the SB side of the Hutchison Parkway just south of the Cross-Westchester Xway.
Am I right?
There was one right by where I used to work that was fairly well done. Nobody that really knew what a pine tree looked like (or grew) would think twice about it's authenticity, but most people wouldn't even notice it if they didn't look straight at it.
The people I worked with, however, were Grand Canyon river guides and should have seen this thing a mile away, a horribly mutated tree that should be cut down and hauled away before it infects the other trees.
It's nauseating when after ten years of it being there, these people think they're special because they pick it out and say, "Look, a phone tower that looks just like a tree!"
How far is it to Skagway?
I like them. Like chocolate soy milk, they are pale imitations of the real deal but awesome in their own way. Like a well done resto-mod, they are meant to invoke a feeling of the original without really trying to fool anyone. I'd also like to see them make some that look like architectural structures like a tower from the GWB or a skeletonized Empire State Building. I say have fun with it.
I agree – they offer the performance improvements that come with updated technology, while retaining a classic look.
That's a "monopine". It's an industry term.
The palm tree ones are only slightly less offensive.
Unless it's in Wisconsin.
Those things suck to crash your bike into, trust me. If you are sliding across the hard-pan, the road/dirt/sand rash you're getting will be the least of your worries once you get impaled on on of those. I'd almost prefer a Cholla, which is certainly the Great Satan of the desert.
http://www.carto.net/neumann/travelling/joshua_tr…
My aunt recommended this site, and she was totally right keep up all the fantastic work
Jacelyn Wallenbrock
It’s strange to see how many sites the internet has about this subject I don’t know if I will need to be back here, but it is good to know I stumbled upon the one that provides a little useful info if this should come up for me again