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Road Trip pic of the day, 7/14: Spring on board

For today's Road Trip 2009 photo challenge, can you describe what these springs are, and where they're located? If so, you could win a prize.

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Daniel Terdiman Former Senior Writer / News
Daniel Terdiman is a senior writer at CNET News covering Twitter, Net culture, and everything in between.
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Daniel Terdiman
2 min read
What are these springs, and where are they located? If you're the first person with the right answer, you'll win a prize as part of the Road Trip 2009 Picture of the Day challenge. Daniel Terdiman/CNET

Update (1:23 a.m.): The answer, as many people correctly emailed me, is that these springs support the buildings deep inside the Cheyenne Mountain complex outside Colorado Springs, Colo., against a nuclear blast, or other major activity that might shake them significantly.

COLUMBIA FALLS, Mont.--I'm now nearly into a week of offering up a daily Picture of the day challenge as part of my Road Trip 2009 project, and if I've learned one thing, it's that you guys are good at solving the mysteries I've presented you with. Very good.

Looking back through the pictures I've taken during the last three-plus weeks, I'm not sure I've got any that you can't figure out, especially if you've read the stories, or looked at the photo galleries. It seems that little visual cues give up the ghost, and it also seems that some of you are very good at making Google work for you.

But you can bet I'll keep on trying to flummox you.

Today's challenge involves these springs. I want to see if, based on nothing more than what's in the image, and nothing else, you can provide me with these pieces of information: What are they? Where are they? And what purpose do they serve? And purely for my edification, how did you arrive at your responses?

Every day I've thought I had a tough one, only to see that within about 20 minutes, 10 people had the right answer. Will today be one of those days, or will I finally have thrown you a curve ball?

Only time will tell. If you're the first person to provide the right responses (sent to daniel dot terdiman at cnet dot com in an e-mail with "Picture of the Day, July 14" in the subject line) then I've got a prize for you.

Let's see what you've got.

Geek Gestalt is on the tail end of Road Trip 2009. After driving more than 12,000 miles in the Pacific Northwest, the Southwest and the Southeast over the last three years, I'm now writing about and photographing the best in technology, science, military, nature, aviation and more in Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota and Colorado. If you have a suggestion for someplace to visit, drop me a line. And in the meantime, join the Road Trip 2009 Facebook page and follow my Twitter feed.