Motion Sickness

If I’m not driving a car and I have to sit in the passenger seat I get motion sickness. Strangest thing. I have parachuted in England and quarry dived near Boston, ridden on a rollercoaster that had multiple loops in Florida and flown in a glider pushed high by thermals in Arizona. I’ve parasailed behind a boat in Virginia and experienced turbulence while landing at Newark airport that had the overhead storage flying open and raining luggage down on my head. Apparently it’s sitting quietly in a comfy seat going 50 mph on a road that does me in. I feel quite the weenie.

Then I got to thinking about it. We live in a 3-D world (I won’t muddy the waters with a discussion on how time is really a 4^th point of reference) so it appears fair to say that in the above example I’m going 50 mph in one direction right? But wait. The earth is revolving isn’t it? I’d better get my Google on. Yep… says right here that its revolving at… wait, is this right? 900 miles an hour? Shit. The earth is turning 900 mph. Wow.

And then earth is orbiting the sun too. How fast are we going? 19 miles a second. Come again?! We sitting here revolving at 900 miles a fucking hour while at the same time hurling through space at 68,400 miles an hour around the sun? Makes me want to lay prone on the ground screaming and grabbing handfuls of grass to avoid flying off.

What’s that Google? Our planet is located in the outer spiral arm of a galaxy? Yeah, I know that… the Milky Way of course. I took astronomy in college. I didn’t actually go to the class very often but that was because the Professor had the balls to teach it at 10 in the morning. Anyway… our ‘arm’ is actually revolving around galactic central point? You don’t say. 40,000 miles an hour. Hmmmm. So I’m driving at 50 mph on the surface of a ball that is revolving on its axis at 900 miles an hour while it orbits around a larger ball at 68,400 mph while both balls and all of the balls we can see are hauling ass through space around a fixed point 30,000 light years away… at 40,000 mph.

Pardon? It’s not a fixed point? Whoa… slow down Captain Planet! The whole fucking thing is expanding? At a million miles a day? Holy fuck.

I think I’m going to be sick.

I must find a way to get in touch with these bigger forces. I’ve got it. I will now close my eyes … spin around 5 times…and then jump as high as I can and free myself from the gravitational constraints that stop me from feeling this smorgasbord of oscillating motion. In the name of science I will now proceed.

Eyes closed.

Spinning.

Jumping.

That’s a negative Ghost Rider, the pattern is full.

Houston, we have a problem.

Did that blow your mind, because that just happened.