Bend it like Beckham...

Do you kick stones along the road?

If I've got nothing better to occupy my mind whilst walking for somewhere to someplace I usually end up trying to kick stones with enough side spin on them to make them curve out and in along the pavement.

The action of the stone curving always made me wonder about the mechanics of it because if a stone was round and spinning, the spin on the right hand side of the stone really should be cancelled out by the spin on the left hand of it. Stones however are not perfectly round, the pavements are not perfectly uniform and my kick would not have sent it along a perfect motion in relation to the ground so I guess it's the bias of these 3 variables that lets it always curve back in.

Sorry, the kicking of stones is usually accompanied with a bit of a mind wander which I've just related for you above.

The other fascinating thing kicking stones is (and I hope others get the same thing or this blether is going right into the obscurities of my thought processes) when approaching a stone. I usually calculate the distance about 3 or 4 steps ahead of a target stone to bring the kicking foot in the exact position to give optimal trajectory across the stone. It's sort of odd watching myself recalculating the last 3 step lengths in order to hit that sweet spot just perfect.