Location Taken: Columbia Gorge, Oregon
Time Taken: June 2008
If you ever want to tell the true size of something, drive past one being transported.
Like this particular beauty. You know those wind turbines that keep popping up at all the windy areas, gently turning and producing electricity? This is one of the blades for that.
Please note the “Oversize Load” sign. Please also note that it wasn’t for width. These things are absurdly long.
When you’re just looking at one of these wind machines, perched happily on a ridge or at the edge of a farmer’s field, the blades don’t seem that large. At least not until you start running through all the perspective clues. The sheer height of these turbines puts the blades where there’s not many clues as to scale; they’re backed only by the clouds and the bright sky. It doesn’t help that they tend to be in inaccessible spots, away from the roads and houses. Unless you own the usually-empty land they dwell on, or are there to maintain them, you never get close enough to see how massive that center pole must be.
Just think, that round area at the end? That’s a good five feet in diameter, wouldn’t you say? Take a look at how the blades connect, at how the whole system works. That five feet is a fraction of the size of the central area that contains the generator, and that’s all perched on a thick pole. It has to be some twenty to thirty feet across, at least! You could build a decent-sized house on the amount of land that covers!
