Traction

A physical impossibility

It just shouldn’t be the case that having less of a surface touching another surface makes something more stable.

And yet: cleats and crampons¹ and the two-railroad-tracks version of a shoe sole that is the bottom of OnClouds seem to indicate that yes, in some way, traction is created by only having 1/10 of the possible surface area somehow makes things more grippy.

Photo by Lucas Canino on Unsplash I sort of get it here, because ICE needs SPIKES. But what about, you know, floors? Floors don’t need spikes! Or … springs? Or … well come to think of it, those shoes are ridiculous and he’s sitting on his butt, so how well did that traction work, exactly?

And like, okay. I don’t accept it, but I know that it’s technically true.

But then there’s loose sand.

Loose sand is NOT a high-traction event. Loose sand is the stuff of landslides and beach exfoliation and the changing of the tide. It’s for marsh grass, sandboxes, and layered art in dated wedding ceremonies.

And yes, sandpaper is rough. But the amazing thing about the sandpaper is that the sand stays on the paper. The sand stays on the paper SO HARD, in fact, that the roughness on other things falls off in fear. Wood becomes smooth … pretty much that is the main use for sandpaper, actually. But that’s because the sandpaper isn’t like, a beach-in-a-box where you rub the paper on something and now there’s a light dusting of rock-seeds² on the ground. Sandpaper is really a true compound word. It’s sand and it’s paper, and they don’t come apart.

Imagine now, that you’d like to increase the traction on the pedestrian walkway on an active parking garage ramp. I mean, probably good, because it has a shiny paint that’s probably slick as snot when it’s wet. And probably there are random brown-haired girls who wear high heels with the traction worn down³ who come barreling down that ramp every weekday evening, convinced that if they slow down for even a moment, life — or some random pedestrian — is going to pass them by. And maybe the parking garage wants all those nice, hard-charging brown-haired girls to not slip and fall. And THAT IS A GOOD GOAL!

So what would you do if you were in charge of the garage? Maybe add, I don’t know, a hand rail??? But of course, you can’t add a hand rail, because it will decrease the side clearance for all the cars coming in and out of this narrow parking garage. So maybe you could add … a dedicated pedestrian entrance with stairs instead of a ramp? Nope, the garage is already built. The people have to keep sharing the road with SUVs cantering up the ramp to then smash the brakes to keep from rolling backward while the arm goes up to then jump-scare tap the gas to surge forward, but just a little, because what if there’s a pedestrian walking by outside just beyond your visibility window?

You’d find an adhesive with roughly the strength of old hairspray on a toilet lid (which is to say, hard to get off but not very good at sticking anything else on), and then you’d dust the pedestrian walkway with sand.

And you’d be convinced that now there’s traction on the pedestrian walkway!

Except actually, all those hard-charging brown-haired girls would now have the faint sensation of roller-skating with every step-slide, step-slide, step-slide they took down the ramp as the pieces of sand temporarily detached from the pavement hairspray and rolled a bit under the weight of a fully grown adult woman, and then, mercifully, stopped sliding again.

And every day, the hard-charging brown-haired girls would have to think to themselves, “no, it’s okay, I can’t be sliding, it’s additional traction. I understand that cleats are for grass and crampons are for icy hills, but if I had some OnClouds right now, I bet I’d be going down this ramp like an absolute mountain goat because of how little my shoe was connecting with the ground.” Step-slide. Step-slide. Step-slide. Down the 38 steps of variable-grade ramp, slick from a fresh coat of paint and unstable because it’s covered in tiny pieces of gravel.

“Somehow, though, I know this must have better traction than the old flooring, where I never slipped,” the brown-haired girls think. “Because it’s like sandpaper!”

Except it’s not like sandpaper. Because the sand stays on sandpaper.

It’s like quicksand with a concrete bottom and sporadically oncoming traffic.

Say a prayer for those hard-charging brown-haired girls. They’re stuck between delusions and crippling, step-sliding fear.

1. Yeah, I agree. There’s no way that can be what they’re called. But alas. That’s the name.

2. Yes, I know that sand comes from rocks, rocks don’t come from sand. But isn’t it a little cute to think that if you planted a grain of sand, maybe one day it would grow into a giant boulder?

No, you’re right. It’s a little weird. it’s the opposite of how rocks work. Oh well.

3. Because the sidewalks of DC will actually act as sandpaper for the bottoms of your shoes, which here do not play “grippy traction,” but instead play “piece of wood that becomes smooth.”