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"This worked for all the things that have set off my curiosity over the years. My favorite epiphany was that night many years ago, having just come from the mainland, when I figured out what those blue bumps in the road are for ..."

Dorsey goes on with a query about some strange object in the mountains that he is obsessed with, and we'll get to it someday. But he never lets us in on his revelation about the blue bumps. What a tease!

So we went out and eyeballed the asphalt. Blue bumps?

We assume he's talking about those reflective lumps between lanes. They became popular in the 1970s with the invention of heat-soluble adhesive. The glue gets sticky when blasted with a flame gun, allowing objects to be adhered directly to the roadway. Reflective tape can be adhered the same way, creating roadway stripes, and you can see road crews sometimes pulling it up with a flame gun reheating the adhesive. The Hawaii Air National Guard tried putting the heat-sensitive tape on their F-4 Phantom fighters in the mid-'80s, and had real trouble getting it off.

Most of the roadway bumps are white or yellow, and reflect headlight beams from quite a distance. But -- some are indeed blue.

Context, context, context. The blue bumps are near fire hydrants.

We asked the city Department of Transportation if that was a coincidence, and they said no way. It's deliberate. Blue bumps help guide fire trucks to hydrants.

So why aren't fire hydrants painted blue?

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