Monday, February 2--Thar She Blows

When Jim left for the States two weeks ago, he parked his car at work and caught the shuttle to the airport. On Friday, I decided his car was probably due for a little exercise, so I swapped my car for his when I was on base running errands. (Okay, that was only part of my motivation—my car needed gas, and I didn’t feel like standing in the pouring rain to fill it up.) The plan was to drive Jim’s car around over the weekend, and swap back today.

When I walked out of the house this morning to get in Jim’s car, I found it was covered roof to wheels in a uniform layer of very fine dust. Immediately I thought, “Crap, now I have to wash his car before he gets home.” As I started the engine, my brain started flipping through possible origins of this strange dust. The very first idea that came to me was volcanic ash—since I have absolutely zero experience with volcanic ash, it must have been some flashback to the lessons about Pompeii I taught to my third graders—but just as quickly I decided that if I announced that theory out loud, people would think I’d lost my mind. So, the wanna-be CSI in me started examining alternative explanations. It couldn’t be ash from a wood fire because a) it was too uniform in size and coverage, and b) I don’t think anyone in Japan burns wood. Diagonally across the street, a house is being repainted, but even if they are sanding the exterior (which they are not), the entire house is shrouded in a protective net that would prevent dust from floating through the neighborhood. So what could it be??

At Jim’s office, I parked his dusty car, and unlocked my dusty car. Huh? My car was covered in the same dust as his. As a matter of fact, so were all the other cars in the lot. Definitely rules out a wood fire or the painters as culprits. Okay, so what about dried salt spray from the ocean? The base is right on a peninsula, and there was a very stiff onshore breeze (gale) yesterday causing good-sized waves to pound against the shore. My car was parked on base all weekend, and I drove Jim’s car over for a few hours yesterday, so it could have gotten covered as well. That must be it. Except I had used the wipers to clean Jim’s windshield on the way home last night, and it was sparkling clean when I parked the car in the driveway. So, that theory was blown, too.

Fresh out of ideas, I let the mystery drop, filled up my car with gas, and turned up the radio for the ride home. I half-listened to one song before it was time for the news, and I tried to pay attention so I could hear just how badly the dollar was doing against the yen today. Imagine my surprise when the newscaster announced the minor eruption this morning of Mt. Asama, a volcano about 90 miles northwest of Tokyo. The eruption caused no damage, but spewed a cloud of ash into the atmosphere to be carried southeast by the prevailing winds—directly over our town. AHA!!! I am not crazy! My first hunch was correct—but how in the world did I know what volcanic ash looked like? The third grade lessons on Pompeii weren’t that specific…