No, I can not express to you exactly why in such a way that would make you understand and in turn like them as much as I do. I just really, really like them. I think they are beautiful.
I've always liked them and didn't actually see one in person until the summer of my junior year in college when I took a road trip to visit my best friend in Pennsylvania. I was driving through some part of the-most-boring-state-in-the-US-to-drive-through (no really look it up-it's dreadful) and over the horizon I could see the propellers start to emerge. There were only about six in this little cluster of turbines but it was such a surprise that I had to stop and try and get a better look at them.
This was before I had a GPS so I couldn't really venture off my current path in order to try and find them but I pulled over into the nearest gas station so I could just watch them for a little while. They were awesome!
It wasn't until 5 years later when I would get the chance to actually see these gorgeous beacons of bad-assery up close and personal. The same aforementioned best friend was getting married in Nebraska and my fella and I took to the road and drove from Connecticut to Nebraska (unfortunately having to go through Pennsylvania-I seriously want those 12 hours of my life back)
Now if you've ever driven through Indiana, Illinois and/or Iowa, you know how flat and unchanging the landscape is. The only thing you see for miles are the occasional abandoned barns and rest stops advertising Bud Light Clamato 24 oz. cans. Click the link-I swear I'm not making this shit up.
Anyways, at one point in our trip the landscape changed and we drove through a somewhat populated farm town and off in the distance I saw a load of white spinning propellers.
Now everything is flat so it's not really that hard to get lost or to find the thing you're looking for once you turn off the highway. So we took the next possible exit (me squealing all the way), drove a mile through this flat farmland and found a huge wind-farm that went on for miles in every direction.
Success!
Naturally I had to spend an hour photographing these sweet sweet engineering wonders but can you really blame me? Look at 'em!
Now, my bf (he has a name, it's Joe) wouldn't let me actually run up and touch (or hug/kiss) any of them as we were on someone's property, but he did agree to let me fill up our SD card with glorious footage of them to my hearts content (he's a pretty nice guy). The result is an online album of nearly 50 pictures of wind turbines for me to enjoy for the rest of my life.
The best part about this trip was that, in addition to this first wind-farm, we drove through about three more and those other farms cut right across the highway. So even though we didn't pull over for the others, we still got to enjoy them up close.
People who know me ask me all the time why I'm so obsessed. First of all, I don't think I'm obsessed. Yes, I do plan on getting a tattoo of a wind turbine (already sketched it up) and yes, I did receive two desk top mini wind turbines as Christmas gifts and one of the latest Wind Farm Lego sets AND and sweet sweet shirt (again from my amazing best friend and his new wifey) that may or may not look like this making me the proud owner of a mini wind farm but c'mon, obsessed? That's a little harsh...
I think the thing that got me interested in the first place, was this awesome kids movie called Mac and Me.
In this movie a young boy befriends an alien that has been separated from his family and together they spend the entire film trying to find this baby aliens parents who are stuck somewhere in the desert. For the entire movie, the baby alien keeps making these mini pinwheels out of flowers and straws and paper and such. Then when they finally realize where they need to go, the scene changes and you see the family mini van drive through this vast desert full of wind turbines. I vividly remember this being the first time in my life I had ever seen anything like them. I always wanted to know what they were and where they were so I could have my mom drive our minivan through the center of this wind farm as well.
Like I said, this was a kids movie and I was super young when I first saw this scene and there was never really much mention of them in other movies or on tv (until Living with Ed came out) or anything like that so I never really expressed my feelings for them one way or another. I mean hell, I grew up and still live in Connecticut and there isn't really a ton of open space (yes we have farms but those are currently occupied by cows) in which to just plant a dozen wind turbines. So it wasn't until that random trip to Pennsylvania and then again the trip to Nebraska that rekindled my love. And, thanks to Facebook, I got to share my pictures (though not all so people didn't think I was nuts-though you probably do now) and express how much I truly do love them. If I could open a farm and live amongst the turbines I would in a second believe it.
So that's the story. And that's why the background of this blog is of a wind turbine. Blogger actually had a wind turbine background I could have used but my bf was nice enough to help me reformat one of the pictures I had taken on our trip to use instead (like I said, he's a nice guy)
If you have any pictures of your own you'd like to share, please do. There's a lot of different wind turbines out there and I'm always excited to see pictures of new ones.
Oh and go see Mac and Me. There's no way you'll appreciate it now, but your kids (or future kids) might :)
turbine under construction-how cool is that?
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