Which means you now have an active warrant out for your arrest.  And just like that, you’re now a part of the criminal justice system. A silly mistake that a middle-class teenager could have solved with Mommy and Daddy’s chequebook in a single afternoon has caused you weeks or months of stress and headaches over a process you don’t fully understand, and has ended in criminal charges. Instead of having a funny story to tell over dinner when you come home from college next Thanksgiving, you are now facing additional fines (that you still can’t pay), the possibility of a couple of nights in jail, the possible suspension of your driver’s license, and the possibility of being taken into custody any time you interact with the police. The next time your parent comes home drunk and violent, or someone breaks into the house, you think twice about calling the cops - you now have to decide if every emergency is “worth” the possibility of being hauled off to jail. And in the meantime, the circumstances that caused that first mistake haven’t gone away - you still don’t have the money to pay for the subway, you are still more likely to live in a house filled with smokers, you still can’t afford quit-smoking aids, you still live in a chaotic household that deeply affects your mental health, and you still don’t understand the legal system or who you’re supposed to talk to for information and resources. So while those other teenagers get to go through life believing that they were “good kids who sometimes made silly mistakes”, you now get to go through life thinking of yourself as a criminal. And that might be the most damaging thing of all. 

When I worked with homeless teenagers and young adults, I saw this process play out again and again and again and again. The kids often considered themselves “criminals” or “bad kids” because they had arrest warrants and criminal records, but few of them had ever actually committed a serious or violent crime - the vast majority were simply unlucky kids who did something stupid and didn’t have the skills or resources (or wealthy parents) required to get them off the hook. I had classmates in my upper-middle-class high school who did far worse things with far fewer consequences, because Mommy was a lawyer or Daddy was an RCMP officer, and some of those kids grew up to be lawyers or police officers themselves. The kids I worked with never got that opportunity. Second chances cost money, and the difference between a “crime” and a “mistake” has less to do with the offense, and more to do with the circumstances you were born into. 

The maximum weight that a vehicle is allowed to carry on the Interstate System per federal law is 80,000 pounds gross vehicle weight (with a max of 20,000 pounds per axle). That’s 40 tons. That limit applies to every inch of pavement, not just the bridges. Since this is a known cap, a new Interstate bridge will be designed to accommodate an 80,000 lb GVW load on it. You could say the bridge’s weight limit is 80,000 lb/40 tons but that doesn’t really have much meaning, because a load higher than that would be illegal to transport on public roads anyway, and the road leading up to the bridge has the same weight restriction. (In practice, the bridge doubtlessly will be designed to have a little bit of let to it just in case some idiot tries to squeak by a few hundred extra pounds.)

Now, note that that law applies to the Interstate System only, because the federal government only has a governing interest in the Interstate System (and other roads that together make up something called the National Highway System) because they partially fund it. Most long-distance roads are owned and funded by the states. The states could theoretically set lower standard weight limits and/or design bridges with lower weight limits…but in practice they don’t.

One, because all of that 80,000 lb GVW traffic on the Interstate system has to go somewhere when it exits the system.

Two, because a group called the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO, who are best known for picking the road numbers) maintains a catalog of standard components for making bridges that meet Interstate System requirements. Engineers are expensive on a per-hour basis, so if you can direct your engineer to use standard components and make a standard bridge, that’s a lot cheaper than having them design a bridge from scratch to go over the creek in Nowheresville. As a result, most new bridges meet Interstate standards and have an 80,000 lb GVW rating even if they aren’t on the Interstate system. (This is also why all new bridges kind of look the same, but we’re not worried about how boring the bridges are for the sake of this post.)

So a bridge only has an explicit weight limit if it has been damaged in some way (through failure to properly maintain it usually) or because it predates the application of Interstate System standards and the standard AASHTO bridges.

Older bridges often have other problems in addition to the weight limits: many older designs are what we call “fracture critical”, which means that if one component of the bridge fails the whole thing collapses. Modern bridge designs have redundancy designed into them so that if one beam fails the other beams will carry the load until the damaged beam can be replaced. Older bridges also often don’t meet other standards, like height (16 ft clearance) and width (12 ft per lane plus 14 ft for shoulders) requirements.

You know, I must admit I don’t have as much depth to add about Bilbo as I did Thorin. I read up a lot on Thorin because he fascinates me, and I have a lot of Richard’s personality and interviews to go off of for filling in the blanks. I’ve not read up nearly as much on Martin Freeman’s take. 

However, I would offer:  Bilbo is meant to be a 20th c. repressed English (specifically: Oxford) gentleman. He’s modeled after Tolkien himself to some extent, as someone who dreamed of dragons finally getting the chance to face one with his own unique skills. 

As to Bilbo’s repression: he’s not stoic or brooding. He’s grouchy. He’s vocal about when the dwarves are irritating him, eventually, and he’s not shy when it comes to complaining about problems. But it’s always quite mild. Even when he’s angry at the dwarves he never really explodes, he never gives them a straightforward order to leave, which I think the dwarves would have understood. Everything in Hobbiton is about appearances and respectability. One can make pleasant conversation or small-talk, or exhibit outrage, but showing the depths of emotions not so much. 

So what does Bilbo in love look like? Bilbo in love is Concerned. 

(All credit to thorinshielding for the gifs, an excerpt from this post about Bilbo looking at Thorin when Thorin isn’t looking) 

Which is funny, because I honestly believe Bilbo fell in love first 

And realized it last

(And only left Erebor because he could not stay with Thorin no longer there)

Bilbo in my mind is unaware of how in love he is. I think in part because, as Martin Freeman said, Thorin is a bit mysterious to him. He’s a legend, he’s not part of Bilbo’s world, he’s from the books and maps. I think Bilbo has trouble connecting the idea that what he feels for Thorin is more than awe until Balin asks him to put it into words. But he was in love throughout, and I think on some level it was the dragon sickness that brought it out of him, because it gave him the chance to take care of Thorin.

I shy away from such gross generalizations as “Bilbo is a caretaker”. I don’t actually see him as parental (he shies away from very small children except as a storyteller), for example, even if he is domestic in the literal sense (I think Thorin is domestic too, the only difference is he doesn’t have a home). But I believe, like Thorin, he shows his love by taking care of others and protecting them, and that’s one of many very interesting parallels between them. As Richard said, it’s two people from wildly different backgrounds finding each other in an improbable place and understanding one another. Bilbo shows his love by helping Thorin get his home back, not Thorin son of Thrain son of Thror get his kingdom back. He shows it by leaping up to defend Thorin from Azog, from asking Thorin’s permission before giving orders to the company to get in the barrels, by keeping the Arkenstone from Thorin because it would make his sickness worse, by being the only person who mentions that Thorin isn’t eating or sleeping, not just that he’s obsessed with gold. Bilbo knows immediately that Thorin is better when he charges out of the mountain, and his first concern isn’t fear for his own safety (Thorin did just threaten to kill him after all), but to get the news to Thorin as soon as possible that he’s walking into a trap. His first instinct when he finds Thorin on the battlefield is to take care of him and heal his wounds. (*sob*)

Bilbo in love is demonstrating the very hobbit-y priority of taking care of the health of the person they’re in love with, just like Sam making sure Frodo ate on their quest, or Pippin finding Merry on the battlefield and his first words to him being “I’m going to take care of you.” That’s hobbit-speak for “I love you.” They don’t necessarily say it with grand gestures or poetry or valuable gems or mithril armor. To a proper English gentleman like Bilbo it would be unthinkable to make such grand gestures, or demonstrate overt affection anywhere but in private.