Battle-Axe Tafoni

Everybody’s working for the weekend
Everybody wants a little romance
Everybody’s goin’ off the deep end
Everybody needs a second chance, oh
You want a piece of my heart
You better start from start
You wanna be in the show
Come on baby let’s go
– by Loverboy

Only, it seemed that today not many people were at work. It was a Friday and many people take that day off, choosing to work four tens instead of the traditional five eight-hour workdays. The summer vacation season is also in full force; so many people took off for that reason. Finally, it is a holiday weekend, of sorts, at least to us dads. Even though I was working towards the weekend all day, it was a rather quiet day. My big thrill of the day came at lunch. I decided to buy a soda from the vending machine. I selected a Coke Zero, mainly because it had been sold-out earlier in the week. My first indication that something was different was the sound of the bottle as it fell down to the dispensing slot. I glanced down and instead of a dark cola filled bottle, this one had something white in it. I initially thought that the bottle had leaked and all that was left in it was frozen foam.

It turns out that I had just won a t-shirt. I followed the instructions on the special label around the outside of the bottle and it broke open across the middle. The t-shirt was so compressed that it was like a rock. It is a plain white t-shirt, with a discrete Coca-Cola logo on the chest. I’ll have to wash it, if only to get all of the wrinkles out of it. Also include in the bottle was an equivalent dollar and a quarter, the sum that I had just fed into the machine. I had to make two trips, but I eventually got my soda.

Interestingly, the t-shirt in the bottle was my size, an XL. This begs the question, was I doubly lucky and not only won a free t-shirt, but one in my size, or are all of the t-shirts in the bottles this size? If the latter, then what does that say about the average Coca-Cola customer?

I thought adding a dollar bill and a quarter was a nice touch. I would have been happy enough with just the t-shirt, but I think that Coke’s legal department must have insisted on including the refund. Otherwise, it would have left the company open to lawsuits, for misrepresentation.

The photograph with this post was taken at Point Lobos, a state nature reserve located just south of Carmel-by-the-Sea. The main feature in this tafoni grouping looks to me like the blade of a battle-axe. The following is part of Wiki’s explanation of tafoni.

Tafoni are small cave-like features found in granular rock such as sandstone, with rounded entrances and smooth concave walls. They often occur in groups that can riddle a hillside, cliff, or other rock formation. They can be found in all climates, but are most abundant in intertidal areas and semi-arid and arid deserts. Currently favored explanations controlling their formation include salt weathering, differential cementation, structural variation in permeability, and the length of the drying period between wettings.