After an exhaustive search through my catalog of car photos I settled upon this contemplative view of an exhaust pipe.
“Exhaust” is one of those odd words when you look at it. It has Latin roots, yet has a Germanic look to it. Perhaps it is just the “haust” part that makes me want to hoist a lager and down a bratwurst. How the explosive release of combustion vapors relates to the draining of physical and mental resources I don’t know. These big pipes never look tired. Sure, cars run out of energy when their tanks run dry, but I rarely equate that with the wonderful noises that often come from exhaust systems. Exhaust notes make their cars seem positively energetic in fact. Only when a car sits idle, with that creaking and popping moans coming from its metal as heat is lost to the air around it does it seem at all “exhausted”. Yet we know that is an illusion. The turn of the starter, is all it will take to spark the machine alert and alive once again. Like the sound of food hitting the dish that brings the sleeping dog to full sprint, the car is never as exhausted as it appears. Until of course, it ceases to function entirely, at which point the exhaust system is just a series of inert metal pipes, rusting at a slightly higher rate than the rusting parts around it. It is then that we can truly say that car is exhausted.