No way of knowing, where we'll be going, our adventures never end.
Caldor and his team of pegasi keep the skies clear for NASCAR.
Additional tags: Caldor (Spectrum/Rainbow Swoop), Sunshower
Another entry in Admiral Biscuit's challenge/request/not-a-contest for more slice of life fics featuring ponies working on Earth:
https://www.fimfiction.net/blog/869870/story-notes-labor-day-plus-a-challenge-to-readers
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Heh, funny considering how this years Daytona 500 got rained delayed. Nice story!
I see you went with Brendan Gaughan for the cover art... Too bad pegasi weren't at the track the last two weeks...
#PrayersforRyan
10101505
Thank you! That was definitely the inspiration.
I was sitting in the stands during the rain delay on Sunday waiting/hoping for the race to restart when I looked over towards Turn 1 and saw a downpour over the tri-oval (I was sitting in Turn 4). I immediately got up and headed for shelter but it was already too late... I was soaked to the skin before I made it five steps.
The one positive of the rain delay was that I upgraded my seat on Monday since the stands were so empty.
10101509
Of the pics I took, this one with Brendan's car worked best. Most of the other shots don't have any room above the fence to put the pegasi. And I love a good underdog - a Gaughan win wouldn't have disappointed me in the least. I was glad he got a top 10 in his final Daytona 500.
Really the biggest problem was that Air Force One did a flyby and the President himself was also in attendance at the beginning. As the season moves on I think they will not be having all those restrictions.
10101788
Please note that this is a completely fictional Daytona 500 (not the 2020 race, which I'm sad to confirm had no pegasi in attendance
). For the purposes of this story Air Force 1 isn't in the vicinity. Instead, the restrictions come from the fact it's not safe for pegasi to be randomly flying into an airport's airspace. No one wants to see a pegasus sucked into a jet engine (it's not good for either the pegasus or the jet). Likewise, the Las Vegas track is adjacent to a military base. It's also restricted airspace.
It's a logical rule to have in place to prevent tragedies.
Besides the wild weather from the Everfree that even RD is afraid of, I postulate that coastal weather is also feral, since there aren’t settlements over the sea where pegasi could shape the weather (your headcanon may vary). Coastal teams patrol the shores and try and mitigate the storms or push them offshore . . . and would likely be capable of dealing with human weather, as well.
I could see the US government (or whatever locale) putting restrictions on ponies trying to modify the weather (and I think there’s a treaty about that, too, although AFAIK ponies aren’t specifically mentioned in it). The worry would be if moving a storm out of the way of whatever might cause worse effects downstream, so to speak. Like bouncing a hurricane off the coast of Florida, only to have it go out to sea, get more moisture, and then come back to hammer the northeast.
Just the same, if there aren’t specific restrictions in place, given the pace of the bureaucracy, I could very well see somebody thinking that nobody’s told him that he can’t hire weatherponies to keep his race track or ballfield or what have you dry for the big event.
I also wholeheartedly agree that pegasi watching the action from above would be more than willing to help push clouds out of the way to make the race that they want to watch happen. That’s hardly even bribery, honestly. “If it doesn’t rain, guys, the race will start faster. As long as those clouds stay outside the fence--”
“Yeah, yeah, we’re on it.” Cue five minutes of weather modification, green flag drops, everypony has a good time. Jim French missed an opportunity to pay those bonus weatherponies with NASCAR swag, though. That’s a great way to advertise the brand. Who wouldn’t want to see a pegasus in a NASCAR shirt? I know I would, and Derpibooru disappointed me.
Also, yeah, airplanes and pegasi are a bad mix. Like a bird strike, but worse. Although I’ve been toying with the idea of writing a dark comedy where even on Earth, the ponies operate with cartoon logic . . . but the human things don’t. So a pegasi gets sucked through a jet engine, she’s fine, just singed and has a few bent feathers. Airplane, not so much.
10105355
), it seems like an oddly specific thing to make a treaty over. I'd imagine it would be about as enforceable as climate change treaties.
Our weather would definitely present new challenges, that's for sure. I was unaware of there being a treaty about modifying weather. Considering we don't have the technology (or pegasi
My thought being that weather control would start small, with things like arranging clear weather for sporting events, parades, etc. and moving on to larger scale operations over time (total global weather control). Mixing natural pegasus weather magic with human technology could bring incredible results. One thing I toyed with mentioning in this story but ultimately decided against was the effect of a lightning strike on a pegasus here on Earth as opposed to Equestria.
As for the coasts, I did give them a shout out:
When it comes to weather, there are few places in Equestria subject to uncontrolled storms. The coasts see their fair share of turbulent weather coming in from the oceans, but Ponyville’s adjacent to the Everfree Forest, home of the worst weather events ever recorded.
Even if I immediately dismissed them as the second string:
If you want ponies who can work with random storms of unknown intensity, you want Ponyville veterans, period.
But that's mostly because this is a first
personpony perspective, andRainbow Swoop SpectrumCaldor has his own biases from working on the Ponyville Weather Team. The downside to writing from a character's perspective is that sometimes their biases bleed through.I imagine any driver that decides he's biased against ponies will find himself experiencing strong, inexplicable
headwinds"aero push" hampering their efforts in the race. Good luck proving that one. The pegasus weather team hates me and caused wind gusts to stop me every time I tried to pass!Sure they did.
I would so read that. Cartoon physics for the win!
I hadn't looked, but you're right, this is pathetic. There are a few pegasi wearing hats:
https://derpibooru.org/images/1399728
https://derpibooru.org/images/1218867
And racing uniforms:
https://derpibooru.org/images/1718769
https://derpibooru.org/images/422624
And one earth pony doing her best impression of a NASCAR stock car:
https://derpibooru.org/images/14012
But the only NASCAR shirts I can find are Equestria Girls. This is disappointing. I thought the community had ponified everything by now.
The best reason.
That's two remarkably terrible puns right there.
Where's THAT story?
10105355
Give the internet time, its VERY busy ensuring that NOTHING is left untouched
I've never seen ratings disabled on a good story before. I wanted to upvote.
10106575 10105355 its one of those treaties that no one can prove anyone did anything but they know its been tried, likely is being tried, and will be tried in the future. There are also tons of proposals to change and or control the climate and weather. There have been numerous attempts to control the weather over a battlefield. The US tried cloud seeding to flood the Hochi-min trail during Vietnam.
As a rule Congress is reactive not proactive but there is or has been several laws about combining human and animal DNA
10107061
I wonder what a cutie mark for that would look like?
They say everyone's good at something. Unfortunately, my special talent is making horrible puns.
10107409
Amazingly, a search of Fimfiction turns up only two:
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/215661/a-seas-race
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/215411/off-like-a-shot
One's incomplete and the other's a tragedy. There's definitely a need for another. I'm not the right author for the job, but somebody definitely needs to fill this gap.
Why can’t I upvote this??
Great read!
10106575
I think it came about around as a result of the time we were thinking of tossing some nukes in a hurricane to see what would happen and the international community quite rightly said, ‘you know, guys, that might not be the best idea.’ As with many treaties, how to enforce it is an issue. Then again, having some of our good or necessary trading partners place sanctions on us (assuming we were the ones to do it) might do the trick.
As 10107980 points out, there is a history of trying to modify the weather for military advantage, and while AFAIK all those attempts were flawed, it did make people sit up and wonder what if in the future there was a technology that actually worked (like steering hurricanes with nukes).
Yeah, I’m on the same page as you there; I think that weather control on Earth with ponies would be very limited to start, given the vast size of Earth and storm systems, and progress with there, and also that human/pony hybrid tech could bring about surprising results (for example, I don’t think pegasi can predict tornadoes like we can [not that we’re great at it, but we can see with radar storms which are likely to produce them, and I think that pegasi would rely on--at best--experience, and ponies spotting for where one crops up].
I had a similar idea in mind in a story I’m working on, but instead of a lightning strike, a power line. All the humans panic after the pegasus hits it, while all the ponies are like, “what, it was only 100kV, what’s the big deal?” I also hinted in SGJ that pegasi are immune to negative lightning strikes, but positive strikes can kill them. [Negative lightning, which is the typical kind, is about 300 million volts and 30k amps; positive is a billion volts and 300k amps and can travel far enough that you won’t see the cloud which killed you.]
Oh, yeah.
That’s the problem with reading it at work and them commenting later, I forget stuff. Still, IMHO, what storms the Everfree can muster pale in comparison with a good nor’easter or hurricane [biased opinion].
Yeah, that’s a fair point. I can’t argue with that, although Silver Glow would. I can’t find the exact quote, but she mentions on at least one occasion mares who go out to sea to fight a storm and don’t come back.
I carried that idea into football and unicorns once.
Let’s just say that the NFL isn’t prepared for a cluster of unicorns to decide the outcome of the Superbowl.
It was a great disappointment to me. Even getting creative with tags. I’d fill the void, but I suck as an artist.
10107409
I know, right? Such low-hanging fruit, and yet. . .
10113079 Ironically because of the nature of electricity to seek ground bird can perch safely on power lines so a Pegasus hitting a high power line night be OK. A lot is how they hit and if the power flow disrupts the heart it might still stun them like getting tazed though. That said a car battery has enough power power to kill someone under right circumstance which is very rare
10113101
In the case of the story, she’s stunned but not otherwise hurt (hits the line and ground). You’re right that if you sit on a power line and don’t touch anything grounded, you’re fine; in fact, helicopter maintenance of high-tension power lines relies on that fact--if both the repairman and the helicopter are energized to line voltage but neither of them touches ground, you can do whatever you need with the line still energized.
10113112 Helicopters have issues with static electricity though and that can issues more so on stormy days..
Ironically the cloud seeding in Vietnam was considered successful but it caused more issues for the American soldier than it did for the Vietnamese ultimately
10113079
I thoroughly enjoyed the entire The Trouble With Unicorns series.
10107601
Ditto: the inability to upvote this story disappointed me.
Otherwise, I enjoyed it!
10113128
Yes, they do, and so do pegasi.
I have to imagine that they were more accustomed to fighting in bad weather than we were.
10114566
Huzzah!
The first story I've seen that deserved an upvote but *isn't* allowed to be voted on.
I enjoyed the story but couldn't upvote either. Is it turned off?
10236487
Yes, I disable the ratings on most of my stories. It's just a personal preference on my part. But I appreciate that you wanted to upvote - thank you!
If you want more details, I made a blog post about it last year:
https://www.fimfiction.net/blog/860542/why-i-disable-ratings
10236741
Cool, no problems :)
A nice little dessert to chase Runnin' On Empty. Very nice.
Perhaps I'm being greedy in asking, but is there a chance of us seeing Caldor and his NASCAR escapades any time in the future? Ponies on Earth & motorsports is a far greater combination then it has any right to be, and this was one of the very first fanfics I read when I got back into the fandom last year, so it's one I hold near and dear.
11493247
I think that can be arranged.
This was fun to write and I've got a few other ideas I could explore to expand this a bit.
11494267
Sounds great!