His Quest For Plywood Failed

Pop Quiz!  What’s the top speed of a sheet of plywood on top of an SUV?  

African or European plywood?  

I don't see how that's relevant.  

Well, in the sense that different wood types in Africa and Europe would create different densities and strengths of plywood.  Also, a Monty Python reference is always relevant. 

Fair points.  

Regardless, I don't actually know the answer in any quantifiable unit, but I can now definitively answer with a qualitative, "not much."  

Today's bit of knowledge has been brought to you by some poor schmuck I watched (and sadly did not video) trying to leave a parking lot with some plywood strapped to his roof.  I use the word trying to imply the word failing.  

So here's how things happened. 

Our erstwhile hero is in the parking lot of a certain home improvement chain store that we've mentioned on the Blag here before.  He has purchased two sheets of plywood which are too large to stow in the back of his SUV.  He subsequently places the sheets on the roof of said SUV and wraps a couple of bungee cords width-wise around the wood, connecting inside of the passenger compartment.  There was nothing in place on the front of the stack to counteract the effects of any airflow underneath the wood which might be generating lift.

Yes, our friend is about to get an important lesson in physics, isn't he? 

As he begins driving away, he apparently realizes that the front of this apparatus needs some support, so he rolls down the window and places his left hand on the side of the plywood, maybe a foot and a half from the bungee cord.  This worked remarkably well for the first 50 yards or so of his journey home.  After that, predictably, things went south.  

Not long before the end of the building, the plywood achieved liftoff, breaking in half roughly along the bungee cord boundary, soaring and spinning majestically about 20 feet in the air as the SUV rolled away.  Fortunately for everyone, the parking lot was nearly empty, and none of the shards of the former sheet landed on anybody or any other cars.  Our hero stopped his car to pick up the pieces of both his plywood and his dignity before angrily shoving all of the mess (which, serendipitously now fit) into the back of his car.  

I was left to lament the fact that I could only make a Blag entry about the events, with no Youtube video from which to make a fortune.