Alignment
Here is an old-school tire shop in the city of Hollister, population 41,678. Photographically, I like the look of an old tire shop, but I never get a good picture. This one's good enough.
The fact that they handle "alignment" is a really weak jumping point (Covid brain fog) to discuss Hollister's place in the world of geology, because there are some fairly significant things going on here.
This town is one of the best places in the world to observe something called "aseismic creep." That does not refer to somebody who stalks but not in an earthshaking way. It refers to smoother-than-normal sliding movement along a transform fault, otherwise known as a strike-slip fault. You know, like the San Andreas I talked about several weeks ago. In Hollister's case, the San Andreas is about five miles west of town, but there's a branching fault called the Calaveras that runs right through here. And while most of the San Andreas moves in fits and starts, stuttering along in big earthquakes that release a lot of built-up stress all at once, the Calaveras releases that stress constantly, in a slow, creeping, constant movement. In short, the fault never gets stuck in a way that winds up jumping 20 feet in 45 seconds. It slides more gently along a few millimeters per year. It flows.
This means the Calaveras Fault, in its current condition, won't experience some big break that rattles the entire state with a 7.0 on the Richter Scale. But it also means that there are streets in town that are slowly but constantly moving past each other. Streets wind up offset. Curbs and sidewalks break. Houses get twisted, if they're built in the wrong spot.
I don't have a picture of any of this, because we didn't want to devote the time into looking for it. If I ever come back here, I'll hunt that down.
Alignment
Here is an old-school tire shop in the city of Hollister, population 41,678. Photographically, I like the look of an old tire shop, but I never get a good picture. This one's good enough.
The fact that they handle "alignment" is a really weak jumping point (Covid brain fog) to discuss Hollister's place in the world of geology, because there are some fairly significant things going on here.
This town is one of the best places in the world to observe something called "aseismic creep." That does not refer to somebody who stalks but not in an earthshaking way. It refers to smoother-than-normal sliding movement along a transform fault, otherwise known as a strike-slip fault. You know, like the San Andreas I talked about several weeks ago. In Hollister's case, the San Andreas is about five miles west of town, but there's a branching fault called the Calaveras that runs right through here. And while most of the San Andreas moves in fits and starts, stuttering along in big earthquakes that release a lot of built-up stress all at once, the Calaveras releases that stress constantly, in a slow, creeping, constant movement. In short, the fault never gets stuck in a way that winds up jumping 20 feet in 45 seconds. It slides more gently along a few millimeters per year. It flows.
This means the Calaveras Fault, in its current condition, won't experience some big break that rattles the entire state with a 7.0 on the Richter Scale. But it also means that there are streets in town that are slowly but constantly moving past each other. Streets wind up offset. Curbs and sidewalks break. Houses get twisted, if they're built in the wrong spot.
I don't have a picture of any of this, because we didn't want to devote the time into looking for it. If I ever come back here, I'll hunt that down.