It’s been raining in California for most of the past week. And not your typical light sprinkles with intermittent patches of cheerful sunniness mixed with a chance of bliss either. No, this has been rain and wind the likes of which we haven’t seen for ages, and that means we all have to try and remember how to drive with our wipers on.
This might seem to be a minor thing for most of you who don’t live in what was once a coastal desert, but believe you-me we don’t come across torrential downpours all that often, so many of us aren’t as prepared as we should be. This means ending up with numerous opportunities to exchange personal information on the side of the freeway, and a lot of overtime for the CHP.
We’re just lucky it doesn’t snow here, and when it does at the higher elevations, they typically shut down the mountain routes like the Grapevine as unfamiliar Angelenos mistake the white stuff for cocaine and abandon their cars while trying to scoop the stuff up with the intention of making a quick buck in the central valley.
But not everybody is as unprepared for inclement weather as Californians, and there’s a lot of you who have become such experts at driving through the snow and slush, or the pouring rain, that we might mistake you for a postal worker if it weren’t for your sunny disposition.
So what’s your best story about driving in the muck? Any 360s on a rain-soaked highway that panicked passengers but gave you the opportunity to tell them I meant to do that? Any I drove my car home covered in snow and the next morning found a bear frozen on the hood? Let us know.
Image sources: [elated.com, carstuckgirls.com]
Hooniverse Asks- What's Your Best Driving In Inclement Weather Story?
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That girl looks cold…
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Bet I could warm her up in no time.
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I could also. But she would be hot from anger after my three pumps and a apology.
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You're being too modest ;P
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That is a great Zinger.
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Awesome. You never cease to crack me up.
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I after a torrential downpour in southern New Mexico, I blasted through a yellow light, turning left. The back-end of my truck swung around, my passenger gave me a frightful look as we spun, spun and spun some more, facing 3 lanes of oncoming traffic. I slammed it in reverse, and slowly turned to face the proper direction. I could tell that everyone at the intersection was pretty amazed at seeing my truck spin a 240. At the time, it seemed unreasonable to have to wait for all that traffic.
The most heroic driving I have done within the last year is getting the hell out of Oklahoma after the Christmas Time Blizzard in our Civic. -
This isn't the wildest thing ever, but it happened 2 days ago and produced an adrenalin rush: In the left lane of a highway, passing a garbage truck, my left tire catches some slush where the plows hadn't gotten the whole width of the road, and the car jerks left hard. I countersteer, but I'm right alongside the truck and he's riding the left edge of his lane. Ended up having the balance the car pushing left through the slush at about a 1/3rd of full lock, and lemme tell you, knowing your wheels are cocked to send you flying into the side of a giant slab of steel even through you're heading straight on at 65 is not a comforting feeling. Had to be careful when leaving the slushy shit too to avoid catching grip suddenly and flinging myself into the garbage truck that way. Luckily I was able to ease it out and catch not much more than a wiggle.
I'm still trying to find someone to blame other than myself, but I don't know if I'll be able to. -
Had to go to my moms house on new years day, from my friends apartment where i was at a new years eve party. Well over the night we got about 30ins of snow… the 1.5mi drive took 30mins, and saw atleast 2 cars try to kill themselves… mind you this was with the windows down, cause the car heater quit working…
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Sadly I do not have any interesting stories other than not dying every time the road is wet (/SoCal). I've never even driven in unplowed snow. In fact, this is the most snow I have ever driven in (driving our LeMons car from San Jose to San Diego – the Grapevine was closed so we had to drive east through Tehachapi and down I-15 to get home).
<img src="http://www.ltdlx.org/albums/pickup/DSCN6660_Medium.jpg">-
Nice pic!
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I have been driving up to and over Washington's mountain passes all my life. On one such snowboarding trip to Stevens Pass I was piloting Mom's Subaru Justy with my brother in the passenger seat. We had just passed Skykomish and were starting to climb into mixed slush and snow road conditions. A slush-filled puddle hydroplaned the right side tires on the light Justy and spun us 180-degrees. We made glancing contact with the barrier on the uphill side of the mountain at 60 MPH going backwards and in the wrong traffic lane. The guy driving the car behind us before we spun was parallel with us for a few heartbeats. I tried everything to slow us down but wet grass is your enemy. A second blow to the barrier and I had enough control to stop the car. Brother Jake received a lump on the head but there were no other injuries. I am very thankful that nobody was driving down the mountain.
We ended up driving it down but the cost to fix the 4WD was too much and the car was totaled. Mom replaced it with an equally oddball SVX. -
It was one day this past summer, and all day long at work, we were watching the radar on the internet, anticipating a huge storm blowing in sometime that evening. When the 6 o'clock bell rang, I hit the door, in hopes that I would beat the incoming turdfloater. Well natch, at 6pm DFW highways more or less resemble parking lots more than they do roads, and trying to get anywhere fast is an excercise in futility. I decide to skip the freeways and hit the surface roads, thinking maybe they'll move a little better, and at the very least I'll be closer to a roadside gas station awning if the hail hits before I get to the casa. I've got the radio tuned to an AM news channel for weather updates, and I'm ducking in and out of traffic, determined to beat the storm home so it doesn't beat my truck silly. Meanwhile, I'm keeping my eyes on the horizon, watching the skies turn from gray to black, and then take on a greenish hue indicating hail in them thar clouds. Then comes the wind.
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At first I'm heading west, right into it, and definitely feel it blowing pretty hard. It's knocking tree branches loose, blowing trash around, and causing motorists with brains in their heads to slow down. I pick up the pace. I turn north toward home, and now I really feel the wind pushing the truck around. At this point debris is littering the streets, I'm running over tree limbs, and I had to dodge a couple of trashbags that were rolling down the street like large, black plastic tumbleweeds. Then the rain started falling. Hard. In huge drops that hit the roof of my truck so hard I thought it was mixed with hail at first. Now it's windy, raining cats and dogs, there's trash all over the roads, and I can't see more than half a car length in front of me. By this time I've slowed my roll considerably and am keeping to the speed limit, but still ducking and weaving through cars that have slowed to a crawl. That's when the freaky moment happened.
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Understand, it wasn't scary because I didn't know what to do. It wasn't scary bacause there was no recovery. It was scary because it's never happened to me before, and it caught me completely by surprise. A wind gust of monster proportion came down and blew me and my beloved Trailblazer from the left lane completely across the center lane and the rear end half way into the right lane! I instinctively counter steered to bring the rear end back to the center lane, shouted a couple of expletives, and immediately decided that slowing down might actually be a good idea at that time. Fortunately I made the rest of the drive home with no drama, the hail all went south, and the storm ended early enough to leave me some daylight by which to pin up my wind-damaged fence.
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I had a similar experience, only at highway speed in my F150. The wind picked me up and moved me over two lanes.
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Wow. I was doing around 45, I can't imagine it at 65. I would have needed a change of underpants!
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Oh, I got this one:
Last winter, the Niagara Peninsula gets about 2 feet of snow on a Saturday morning. Unfortunately, it starts after my inlaws arrive for a visit.
After 4 hours of being stuck in the house, I decide that I need a little room to breath, and to that end, I am going to take a drive to the local Canadian Tire.
Being my inlaws, they decide that they should join me, and that my wife and 10-month-old should come along. So five of us stuff ourselves into my snow-tire equipped Protege 5. Between us and the Canadian Tire stands the Short Hills. While they are no tail of the dragon, the Short Hills are fairly tight, and twisty and provide lots of elevation changes. About 10 minutes into the trip, I crest a hill travelling approximately 70 kph. Ahead of us, on a cross street is a snowplow. He has a stop sign, so I don't worry too much about it. At first…
Whether he saw us or not, the snowplow decided NOT to heed the stop sign. Not only did he not heed it, but his plan was to make a 3-point turn at this intersection, so he pulled out into the middle of the road, and came to a stop.
To recap: I'm travelling 70 kph in about a foot of snow, in a Protege5, with 700 lbs of adults and my first born son. In front of us, stopped in the middle of the road, is a snowplow. due to his location, only about 25% of the road is available on either side of him.
Steer, stab, and FLICK! I pitch the P5 sideways. We pass the snowplow in a 4-wheel drift. Snow is flying up over the side of the car, the plow blade is visible through the windshield, inches to spare between the front of the car and it, and the rear of the car and the deep rural ditch.
Danger averted, I get the P5 back into a straight line, downshift to put the speed back on, and say calmly to my white-knuckled inlaws "That, ladies and gentlemen, is why you buy snow tires."-
[Cut to smiling/laughing child]
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I grew up in WI, your story made me relive my childhood winters in the car with dad. AWESOME.
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It's Friday night in November and the wife and I are headed home from dinner. The roads are wet with rain and a cold front is pushing in behind it. Our route takes us across the local river and I notice wheelslip while accelerating. Thinking nothing of it, I continue the journey towards home. As we reach a local town I notice everyone's driving a bit slower than the posted speed limits. Frustrated, I jump onto the highway since it was traffic free. I am ready to merge to another highway when I notice a Camaro in front of me going all of 30mph. Being invincible in my lifted truck, I press on at 65mph. Then I hit the interchange. It dawns on me too late that the interchanges are ice and I am now sliding sideways at 65mph threatening to wipe out the Camaro. Countersteering and praying, I miss the Camaro and cross the interchange without looping it. With my heartbeat returning to a normal rate, I look ahead to a sea of brake lights. It appears somebody else wasn't so lucky.
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I was in high school, a big snowstorm hit during break, and my dad needed a ride to the bus stop to go to work (he figured it was easier using public trans). As I dropped him off, the snow got heavier. My girlfriend-at-the-time's house was on the way home, so I just stopped there and got "snowed in" for the day. Good times.
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Well it would've been in December 2004 – first semester of my junior year of HS. There was a horrible snow/ice storm in Raleigh, and the WCPSS really screwed the pooch on dealing with it. It snowed, then it warmed up just enough to rain, then it got colder and the rain froze on top of the snow, and then it snowed some more. in RALEIGH.
Now, if you've never driven in a snow storm in the south, you haven't lived life to the fullest. You've never been quite as close-to-death as when there are redneck idiots in jacked-up Rams who have NO IDEA what they're doing in the snow careening towards you. The schools ended up letting out an hour or two early, and I promised three people I would take them home.
At the time I still had my '97 Volvo 850 sedan. I had a set of steel wheels with Bridgestone Blizzak WS-50's (I think?) on them… sitting at home in the garage. The all-season performance tires on the car weren't ideal, but i was AMAZED at how well I did. The simple traction control system did the trick, and having that heavy iron-block engine over the front (driven) wheels gave great grip. the ABS was without fault, and the "winter" mode on the transmission that starts you out in third is quite good at preventing wheelspin. Still, FWD and A/S tires.
it was SO slippery out there. It was probably in the low twenties, so even though it was sunny nothing was melting. I took two of the people home without incident (actually quite nice driving a Volvo in the snow!), and cut a left from a neighborhood onto Durant Rd. Now, i know probably no one here knows Raleigh, so Durant is basically a road that cuts between two main roads (Capital Blvd/US-1 and Falls of Neuse/Wake Forest Rd.) As i start heading up the road, which gradually turns into a pretty steep hill, this lady in a white E36 325is pulls out onto the main drag to go up into the road. Here the hilarity ensues.
She takes a right and her cute white beemer immediately spins around backwards in the intersection. Off to a great start. She flips it back around pointing the right way and starts heading up the hill. Gets about 30ft up the hill before her wheels start to slip and her forward progress is halted. But she's determined to get up this hill, so she slides/reverses back down to the bottom, backs up a bit, and gets a faster start up the hill. This time she gets about 50 feet up the hill, with a LOAD of wheelspin, and gets stuck again. So she flips it around, drives all the way down the hill and past the stoplight (200+ feet), flips around again, and GUNS IT LIKE SHE MEANS IT.
So there's flying snow and a howling BMW I6 as she flies by. Gets about 2/3 the way up the hill, can't make it, backs it into the curb and gives up. At this point I decide it's safe to go, put it in drive, and go right past her at about 30mph. Waving.
Ahh, beemer drivers. Can't hang with my Volvo, bitch!-
Ah, come on. Why the Beemer hate? The Lady put up a good fight (you were no help….just sneering).
Now you tell us all the bad stories, please, where your nose-heavy brick just understeered. Whenever it felt like it. And the torque-steer. And how much fun that is. Then we sneer.-
Come on, now. Play nice, guys.
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Escort Mk1 and snow, do I have to say more?
<img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2097/2080301819_15c85cf684.jpg">-
Oooo…pretty. The car, not you.
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The very night I got my first car (a 1976 2002) I went for a drive in a heavy rain, with no experience with rear wheel drive cars. I took the first 90 degree corner in my neighborhood only to discover that the car was going perfectly sideways down the street. I corrected and the rear snapped back into place almost instantly. That moment sold me on RWD and hoonin' it up anytime I can have fake muscle via wheelspin.
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Back in college I was involved with the Residence Hall Association. It was a blast. We got to go to all sorts of conferences and come up with new and dumb ways to get people actually interested in living in the residence halls. One of these conferences was at Utah State in Logan. Since our budget was slim we decided to drive. Everyone packed into my '87 Crown Vic wagon or my buddy's Grand Prix and we headed north. Getting there was not problem — it took about 12 hours. As usual when you get a bunch of college kids together, there was some partying and many late nights. Then we had to drive home. Still, not a big deal…until we woke up that morning to a major snow storm. Crap.
Basically from SLC all the way to St. George it was near-blizzard conditions. The plows weren't out since they wouldn't have kept up anyway. Every time we stopped for gas or to stretch our legs the gas station attendants would tell us we should wait it out. We couldn't. Someone had a project due the next day and had to get back. So, we pressed on. The headlights on the Crown Vic would fill with snow every few miles and I would just throw the hazards on and get out to clean them out. I couldn't pull over easily since I was pretty much driving in the ruts of the few semis nutty enough to be driving. Thank God for those semis. -
Drove up to Tahoe one night during a blizzard. Probably 6" of fresh snow on the roads, not much in the way of visibility. Spent the time oversteering around corners in the family Suburban.
Not much of a story aside from the fact that I was a little over 15 at the time.-
Wait, you drove around the Suburbs in your family's Tahoe? I'm confused.
If I had started oversteering at that age, I don't even want to know where I'd be now.
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Driving through a snowstorm I came up on two vehicles doing what I call the "20mph drag race". Neither wanted to pass the other. Being in a Semi, I must of intimidated the Ford Ranger driver in the left hand lane as he suddenly decided to speed up, causing him to fishtail sideways into the Acura RSX beside him. This little tap spun the RSX right around so it was sliding straight backwards facing my Truck for about 100 feet. Through all the snow falling I could see the abject horror in the drivers eyes as they were about to become a freightliner hood ornament. At the moment before bumper to bumper impact the RSX whipped around and spun off into the center ditch. This freed me up to pull over & change my shorts before helping them out of the ditch.
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You mentioned your shorts. But what about the RSX driver, did he need to change his?
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This is a topic near and dear to my heart. Just last fall my four brothers and I were sharing the worst driving experience we had but had specifically contained that experience to one section of roadway. Interstate 44 between Tulsa, OK and our hometown of Springfield, MO. Incidentally, I-44 follows a similar route alongside Route 66.
Anyway, my brother, Ed, also known as thejeepjunkie and I, this olelongrooffan, for a time in the late 1970's, worked in the Young American Conservation Corps, a hold over from the Civilian Conservation Corps of the Great Depression as an attempt to employ those "unemployable" types. Basically, a government program to perform work but to pay sub-minimum wages. It worked, for a while.
What we did was clear forests, plant trees, clear habitat for endangered species and general forestry duties for the US Forest Service in the Quachiata National Forest, down just south of Mena, Arkansas. -
Now, this was about a, normally, five hour trip, each way, and we always tried to get back to the Queen City 2 or 3 times a month. After all, the woods are okay, if you like that sort of thing. After living on Haven Lee Farm, we want some excitement.
One of the things this old man remembers after 30 years, is seeing an early '60's yellow VW panel bus, with a set of barn doors on each side, sitting in a field, less that 40 yards from the highway. Yet, another, missed opportunity.
So, the, as he would be known in the years to come, jeepjunkie and I got jobs down that way to, basically, do everything we had done down on the farm. As we were "farm boys" working with mostly urban youth, we tended to be given leadership positions, and usually made the most of that.
One time a potentially major snowstorm was headed our way across Texas and Oklahoma, the week prior to the Thanksgiving weekend. We cajoled our way into an early release and took off up Highway 71 toward Joplin, in my 66 Volkswagon Type I Bug, the ownership of which is still, some 30 years later, a point of contention between thejeepjunkie and I. -
So, having been given "leave", we took off around 6 that evening.
No concerns. This is a German engineered vehicle, capable of traversing many trecherous conditions.
What? A Texas Snowstorm? An Oklahoma Windstorm? Hell, we were 19 or 20, we can survive anything.
Ed and I did decide, however, we would stick to Hwy 71 up to I-44 and cut across that superhighway to the Queen City. Now this was before the huge Wal-Mart presence in northwest Arkansas, there were no Interstates in northwest Arkansas. US ALT 71 was the best highway in the area.
So, we hit I-44, just as the worst of the storm was arriving. We decided, in our infinite wisdom, we should fill up with petrol. Which we did.
Got out to the "Open Highway", I-44, to find ourselves behind about 30 motorists, following a snowplow at about 25 mph.
But with a full tank of gas and just a few inches of snow on the ground.
Well, we knew we could travel faster than that snowplow and beat this storm back to the Ozarks, less than 60 miles away. -
OK I'll tell this one even though it bruises my ego. Picture this, living in Germany in a small village on a hill, driving my Crown Vic. It was a morning in January after a rare snowfall. I was scheduled to fly a trip down to the Bosnia area so there was a lot of pressure to get out to the airport. The gradient on our only road down to the main strasse is way steeper than anything allowable in North America. No salt, no sand allowed in our part of Germany. Not being a total idiot I stopped at the top of the hill and checked the road. Apart from a thin layer of snow the road was good. So into the Crown Vic and I start down the hill only to realize halfway down there is glare ice under the snow. Brakes don't help, it is so slick the car won't even steer while rolling without brake. As it accelerates I remember the street ends in a "T" intersection with houses on the opposite side. So here I am in a 2 ton curling stone. Luckily the Vic drifts sideways into a Fiat, stoving in the drivers door. But it slides off the Fiat and continues down the hill. Damn. Fortunately the automotive Gods put a Mazda 323 in my way. After a nice solid rear-end (yeah, go ahead and laugh) the Vic stops. Minimal damage to the Mazda. Not a scratch on the Vic. And then I get a call that the flight is canceled. Merde.
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So we passed that snowplow and carried on about our way.
Til the blizzard came. Yeah, a blizzard. 32 inches total overnite. Never since that day, over 30 years ago, have I, nor thejeepjunkie, seen such snow.
We are driving along I-44, following the ruts rapidly filling ruts of the semi trucks ahead of us and, suddenly, that ole Bug got away from me. We ended up in a snow bank in the median. Ed and I jump out and try to lift the front end out.
No luck, remember, we got a full tank of gas.
Luckily, a couple of 420 induced hoons came by in some 4WD vehicle and yanked us out and we got back on the road.
Only to later become "high centered" in the middle of I-44. We were stuck in the middle of the travel lanes of the interstate. -
No one around. Cold wet snow falling almost blinding.
Well, as some of you know, Volkwagons are not known as the best marque for their heaters, especially while sitting still.
We sat there for what seemed like hours until headlights showed up behind us. Luckily, we still had tail lights and that snowplow, with the now 60 cars following, did not plow us over. That driver, who I am sure is still smirking to beat the devil, just drove around us.
Once those cars passed up by, we got out, lifted the old bug over and followed them to the Queen City of the Ozarks, arriving just as dawn was arriving in front of us. Yeah, I still can make a 5 hour trip into a 12 hour trip with no problem.
I will tell you this, there are few things more beautiful than a snow covered landscape, whether rural or urban, with no human markings, other than fresh snow and clean snowplowed streets, upon them. -
I will always remember driving along Sunshine, the absolute first vehicle, after the plows, to drive along that street, east of Glenstone and that long, straight stretch eastward.
But would I do it again?
Yeah, probably. Depends if thejeepjunkie would come along.
If interested, you can read the full blog with pictures here…
http://oleragtop.blogspot.com/2008/09/travails-al…
Thanks for letting this oleman remember that trip once again.
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I made several unwise trips in my '96 Thunderbird in college. The most amusing might be in mid-May 2002 when our IVCF chapter loaded up a convoy of 4 cars and left our college town in the early evening one Saturday to spend a week at a camp in Colorado. Me and another of the drivers (who was driving his parents' conversion van) decided we were going to drive the whole way whatever it took. Seeing the mountains at Denver at dawn was lovely, but we quickly ran into snow as we continued west on I-70. Our destination was near US-40 so we got to take the Berthoud Pass, in snow, with the two least-winter-suited cars also having the most fatigued drivers. We made it just fine but I think my back seat passengers were scared from my continual and occasionally intentional oversteer.
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Best or worst? I was once heading west on I-96 around the edge of the Detroit proper at about 2 am in my trusty, '88 Tempo (4-doors, 5 speed). I never figured out what happened, but on one of the curves the Tempo just looped a beautiful and graceful 720 degrees and ended up facing the correct direction and still going 65 mph. (this was, of course, on snow)
A few years ago i, my brother and my SO made the trip from Marquette (in the UP) to Detroit…7 hours or so depending on how you drive it…for Thanksgiving in shitbox Kia rental. From Marquette to the Bridge took almost 4 hours of guessing where and if there was a road; hoping that there was no oncoming traffic, since i couldn't see it until it was about 60 feet in front of me; and all sorts of fun stuff like wipers clogging with slush every 2.5 minutes. Four frickin' hours, and i've been very bad and done that trip in less than two. -
I have a (tastefully) lowered 240SX as my daily driver in a snowy climate; take your pick. And yes, I love every minute of it!
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Honestly, I think the experiences of a certain Dakota driving acquaintance top that, even if we were never in the truck.
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Who knew having some chicken wings could turn someone into a turkey behind the wheel?
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I have a good one to tell but its far too long a story for here. It involved driving up Hwy 1 in 1972 on my way to Laguna Seca for the Can-Am race in October, through what turned out to be one of the worst storms in the last century. It involved a Pinto, a Torino, an MGB, a VW Beetle full of stoners, a naked chick and her boyfriend. and ended with a VW Squareback. It reads like high fiction, but I sware its all true. If you want to read it, email me at JoeDunlap@msn.com
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As the driver of a pick-up, the rear-end of my truck is kicked out any time water in any form hits the road. One time the water got the best of me. I was driving down I-94 just north of Detroit in morning traffic. It had stopped raining a few hours earlier and the road seemed fine. Hiding in the shadow of an overpass was a big-arse puddle that I was unable to see until I was suddenly staring at the cement median wall a foot away from my bumper as I continued to do 70mph down the road. natural instinct kicked in and I counter-steered it back in line, but momentum carried me 180 degrees around so I was looking across three lanes of traffic (thankfully empty somehow). This kept up for a few turns until I finally straightened it out. Scared the piss out of me, but no damage was done, and I had a great story to tell when I got to work.
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Back in high school (about 10 years ago), it had just iced here in Fort Worth so me and a bunch of friends decided to head west and have some fun. At the time, where I-30 and 1-20 meet just west of Fort Worth they had been doing roadwork on the highway so the lanes were uneven. I was going about 25 or so and changed lanes but had to go over a hump to get into the freshly paved lane from the torn up lane that I was in, the lip was probably about 2 or 3 inches. Anyway, I was driving a 2wd Dodge Ram at the time and the front tires made it over the hump, but then the truck slid sideways and the back tires would not make it over the hump because the ice was too slick. I locked the wheel to the right and kept on the gas and the truck just stayed sideways but kept sliding along the lip driving horizontally. I drove for about 5 miles almost completely sideways with the wheels just slipping and the front tires slowly pushing the truck down the road. Of course I could have easily backed up off the lip and tried again or stayed in the lower lane, but where would the fun in that be.
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Driving home from work on interstate 50 in Sacramento, it had been raining quite hard all afternoon and the rain was letting up and the sun was trying to come out. I was driving east on the long grade from the downtown interchange towards the 65th street exit in the number 2 lane at about 60 mph in heavy traffic, lots of water on the road. In the number one lane to my left, a Chevy pickup towing a ski boat passes me at about 70 mph, and just as the boat pass my front fender the truck and boat trailer start to hydroplane, and the ass end of the boat passes into my lane, inches from the front of my Mustang 5.0. The truck and trailer continue to hydroplane gracefully together at 70, missing all of the cars around them until they're facing the wrong way in traffic, sliding backwards at 70, until they drift into the center guardrail and grind to a stop. The traffic around us hardly slowed down. California drivers in the rain are nuts.
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This is a topic near and dear to my heart. Just last fall my four brothers and I were sharing the worst driving experience we had but had specifically contained that experience to one section of roadway. Interstate 44 between Tulsa, OK and our hometown of Springfield, MO. Incidentally, I-44 follows a similar route alongside Route 66.
Anyway, my brother, Ed, also known as thejeepjunkie and I, this olelongrooffan, for a time in the late 1970's, worked in the Young American Conservation Corps, a hold over from the Civilian Conservation Corps of the Great Depression as an attempt to employ those "unemployable" types. Basically, a government program to perform work but to pay sub-minimum wages. It worked, for a while.
What we did was clear forests, plant trees, clear habitat for endangered species and general forestry duties for the US Forest Service in the Quachiata National Forest, down just south of Mena, Arkansas. -
I will always remember driving along Sunshine, the absolute first vehicle, after the plows, to drive along that street, east of Glenstone and that long, straight stretch eastward.
But would I do it again?
Yeah, probably. Depends if thejeepjunkie would come along.
If interested, you can read the full blog with pictures here…
http://oleragtop.blogspot.com/2008/09/travails-al…
Thanks for letting this oleman remember that trip once again.
longrooffan -
When: The winter of '94. Where: Orange, CA. What I was driving: 1984 Ford F-350 Crew Cab Dually with no paint (it fell off). The winter of 94 was a wet one for us in So. Cal. with that whole El Nino thing and all. It was evening and I can't remember if I was just driving around or I had somplace to go. Likely the former. I tend to drive in inclimate weather for fun. During this storm most of the town of Orange flooded making it the place for me to be. I was having fun driving around splashing through the deeper spots of water wondering why it kept flying up and over the hood on to the windshield. Time came for me to stop having fun and actually go to where ever I was going that night. I started heading up Glassell Ave while tromping thought he deep water when I came up to this slowpoke barely going 15 MPH in front of me. I know it was some sort of wagon, square shaped but I don't remember exactly what it was, maybe a Cressida wagon or maybe something like a Chev Celebrity wagon. Anyways I finally got fed up with this over-cautious joker dove through the deep water and just hosed him. Just after I passed him I realized why he was driving so slow… he was floating, not driving down Glassell, and for once my juvenile, arrogant doucheness actually helped somebody. The "Bow wave" of my truck managed to push the wagon up onto the crown of the road and allowed him get enough traction to get out of there.
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I bounced Violet off of two snowbanks at low speed during inch-an-hour near-whiteout snow last weekend. Zero damage (well, I'm not positive that the second one wasn't what knocked my tailpipe off its mounting bracket). The first one was a bit too much oversteer and a light tap followed by a sheepish grin; the second one was just the right amount and a light tap with the rear quarter, regaining control with a hoonish grin.
Seeing as this is my first winter with a license, I'm taking advantage of every bit. -
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