High rollers
http://www.economist.com/books/displaystory.cfm?story_id=7138856
Jul 6th 2006
From The Economist print edition
IF YOU choose lobster from a menu, then wherever you are in the world,
the odds are that your dinner may have come from Arichat in Nova
Scotia. The lobster, trapped off the Canadian coast, would have been
driven to Louisville, Kentucky, where, cocooned in gel packs and
styrofoam, it went for a wild ride on the carousels of the UPS
superhub, where 17,000 high-speed conveyor belts, carrying more than 8m
packages a week, whisk your living lobster to a plane and on onto
tables across the globe.
John McPhee's new book is about supply lines: how a lobster shares a
conveyor belt with Bentley spare parts and Jockey underwear. It is
about boats, trains and trucks, but mostly it is about the people who
drive, tend and love the machines. Don Ainsworth owns an 18-wheeler
with "a tractor of such dark sapphire that only bright sunlight could
bring forth its colour." To wash his truck Mr Ainsworth uses only
water that has either been de-ionised or has undergone reverse-osmosis;
anything else leaves spots. "This is as close as a man will ever
know", he says, "what it feels like to be a truly gorgeous woman.
People giving us looks, going thumbs up."
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