Black Ice
Every northerner knows it, and knows how treacherous it is.
below 20 degrees, which is when black ice is worst, is where salt won’t work anyway, which is why the road crews here use calcium chloride. It works below zero F, and will help keep the roads clear, but too much will hose up the road.
North they use sand and clinker, because the point is not to melt the ice but to provide traction. And that it does, barely. At that point it becomes about skill.
Several years back we were on our way back from Canada, in the middle of winter. The roads were black ice all the way, but traffic was moving fairly well. The wife was driving, and we crested a hill to see the road full of stopped cars. She took the Explorer from 50 to a dead stop in less time than it takes to clench your butt, and while the car went sideways all the damned way, she was in control the whole time.
because she knew how to drive.
I myself have never driven in an actual hurricane, though I have driven close enough to a big twister to see it. I have not driven through the desert alone, and I would not. I have few enough hours on a motorcycle that I wouldn’t even attempt to ride one- well, anywhere, anymore.
I know what my limitations are. I have driven around roadblocks onto roads that snowplows won’t hazard. I drove, winter and summer, nearly 700 miles each way to visit the Ogwife when she was the Og Girlfriend. We drove those roads together, after marriage. She drove a Uhaul full of her posessions through a miserable winter, unloaded it at our home, and drove it back the same night, a 1400 mile round trip without so much as a nap, fueled by caffeine and nicotine, driving an unfamiliar vehicle. we were both so broke we couldn’t pay attention.
I don’t drive beyond my limitations, or the limitations of my vehicle. I have a truckload of shit that helps me to be prepared for whatever might occur. I am still paranoid, and always assume I have forgotten something.
What on earth makes people go out in shit they KNOW they can’t handle? Sit tight, people. It’ will all be over in a day. Better to get to know Ajit at the Quickee Mart than to have your ride crushed on the interstate. You have a cellphone, call home and make sure they stay there too.
17 comments Og | Uncategorized
It always used to amaze me how in the worst weather granny and grandpap (generic, not mine) had to go somewhere to get something they “needed”
I thing it is gethereitis. It afflicts all of use in one degree or another. I convinces pilots to go up in weather that is beyond minimums, or commuters to slog through no matter what.
It creates tunnel vision so bad you cannot see any other option but going home.
Thinking out side the box and getting off the X had helped us see the options. And there are always options, just sometimes ignored.
It is a wonder we have managed to come so far when we are so flawed.
I’ll tell ya…I’ve driven in more blizzard-like conditions over the last 20 years than I like to think about. The Pennsylvania Turnpike, 1994-95, was undergoing some pretty massive rebuilding just east of New Stanton, and the right lane in a lot of cases was the right shoulder with no guardrail…and in places a sheer dropoff if you got too far to the right. I mind driving through there one night in heavy snow with visibility nearly zero and semis blowing past me on the left.
This Atlanta thing reminded me a lot of the many times I’ve been in the DC metro area during winter (and the several times I’ve been stuck there in blizzards. Blizzards follow me around, I swear). Folks there simply don’t know how to deal with a little snow or ice on the roads. And it’s not their fault; they just don’t see it very often, so they have no experience to guide them. Why they don’t stay the hell off the roads in conditions like that, though, is beyond me.
“ And it’s not their fault; they just don’t see it very often, so they have no experience to guide them.”
Were there any way to get the data, I would bet you lunch at the brewpub that a quarter to a third of the worst-stuck people on those Atlanta streets were transplanted Yankees who “knew how to drive in snow”.
I saw it and heard it over and over again for most of my life.
Were there any way to get that data, I’d take that bet.
It makes no difference how well YOU are prepared, when everyone around you on the road is unprepared. If you don’t crash into them, they WILL crash into you.
I just stay home.
And staying home is, indeed, the proper course of action. the “Transplants” to the south- or, for that matter, the pacific northwest- are the worst of the worst, those too stupid to hack a Midwest winter. We send them away so southerners get the false impression that Yankees are loudmouthed, stupid, and liberal.
+1 on Rivrdog!
Gee, and there I was trying to be nice :) But this potential Yankee transplant only thinks about South Florida when considering said transplant :)
of course. Miami is G-ds waiting room for dead sea pedestrians, yes? G-d allow you to live long enough in the south to be forgiven for forgetting how to drive.
I could live in Florida the rest of my life and never forget the winters up here. Course in a few years, we might see snow in Miami, but whose counting.
Rivrdog, you’re right. I ride a bike. I feel that way all year.
“And staying home is, indeed, the proper course of action. the “Transplants†to the south- or, for that matter, the pacific northwest- are the worst of the worst, those too stupid to hack a Midwest winter. We send them away so southerners get the false impression that Yankees are loudmouthed, stupid, and liberal. ”
Yeah? Your mom, too.
Wow, talk about the kicked dog yelping. ;)
You’re the one who called my parents loudmouthed stupid liberals. I don’t talk about your mom like that.
(Although I understand that you meant those OTHER Yankee transferees, not any that were kin to me. Kinda like the way I mean them OTHER Canadians. ;) )
lol. I could care less how you talk about my mom. She’s a transplant, like my dad, like my wife, like all of my family. We all of us come from somewhere else, even most of the the injuns. I just figure, hey, if I’ma poke a bear, I’ll poke a big one, and I had frankly hoped for something a lot more creative than “So’s your mom” but I put it down to you being temporarily undercaffeinated. ;)
And my mom can’t hardly drive on dry pavement, having even had a history of having accidents with imaginary trees.
Son has advised that the locals in the Seattle/Tacoma area collectively lose their shit on the roads when there’s actual snow or ice on them. Makes their brains freeze or something.