High Street Flyers Fly High!

High Street, the nondescript little road lined with quaint little mill houses and whose only claim to fame is as the shortcut between Hillsborough Road and West Main as a new claim to fame. Unhappy, with it's image as a boring road and using the flying action on James Street as their model, they decided improve their image.

"We read about cars going airborne on James Street", explained one resident of High Street and were quite impressed with what they had down to improve the resale value of the houses on their street while at the same time adding a new activity to their neighborhood. We sent a delegation down to observe their humps and were quite impressed with the height and distance that the cars were able to generate as they took the humps. We set up a committee, hired a team of aerodynamic physicists and developed a new type of hump that would give the cars a little more lift and more distance than they were able to develop on James Street. It's our hope that we can lure some of the traffic from James Street to ours".

The design change High Street is talking about has been named a table, not a hump. And from the looks of things humps will be the bumps of the past with tables becoming the new innovative, high tech product of the 21st Century.

What is a Table? The table is more of an elongated hump. Imagine fifteen humps in a row with a piece of plywood over them so that they become one long hump, or table. Cover the table with asphalt and then you have your Speed Table, ready for use.

What makes these Tables so special? Unlike the hump, which fights the laws of gravity, the Table is aided by it. On James Street when a car hits the hump the front end of the car goes airborne and the car is propelled forward at about a 45 degree angle(think of the hand on your clock halfway between the '1' and the '2'). This allows for a little more distance because the back wheels will touch down first, but the downside is that the front and comes down pretty hard as it slams to the ground while the car loses it's velocity. Also that angle creates a lot of resistance as cars were not designed to travel at a 45 degree angle to the road.

The Tables have been designed so that the front of the car lifts slightly as it hits the Table, and then the car bounces a couple of times as the rear wheels hit and then land on the Table. After a couple of bounces the car goes airborne but unlike James Street it travels almost perpendicular to the road making it more aerodynamic, allowing it to cover larger distances and landing much smoother.

The unveiling of the Tables was attended by the whole street and the ribbon cutting symbolized a new phase in the, until now, unillustrious history of High Street.

Flying high on High Street is no longer the sole domain of the pot smokers, now all drivers can claim to fly high on High Street, as long as they give their car a little gas as they approach the Tables!