Having Fun Again

 The power has been on for over a day now, and the seriousness of the situation has abated significantly. Today I’m having a fun time again.

Darlene had a doctor’s appointment this morning. Even though it has been snowing all night, we have only 5” on the ground. We decided I would drive her to town. We were almost the only vehicle on the road.

At 9:00 AM there were no snowplows out, even on the highway. The little Mazda was dragging bottom badly, and in some places plowing and pushing the snow in front, but as long as I can maintain momentum we move along just fine. The snow is fine, hard frozen powder and is easy to push away, even with the ice sheet on the road surface underneath.

I had to back up and punch through the ridge of snow on the side of the highway, but once I got out on the highway I was able to get up to 55 or 60  on the hard ice and packed snow. There were no other cars around, so stopping distance was infinite. 

When I got to town, the snow ridges were much higher between lanes, and especially in the median. When coming into Durant on West Main St, it is necessary to make a U-turn through the break in the median to turn north onto Westside St., since the freeway ramp offset the road by a couple of hundred feet.

Now we were in traffic, and several were waiting at the traffic light as I approached. The green arrow came on, so I held my speed up to conserve momentum to turn through the median for the U-turn. Sure enough, the deep snow caused my front wheels to skid wide on the U-turn, and it looked like we might hit the ditch. 

Knowing the brakes wouldn’t help me, I grabbed the parking brake lever, held down the button and pulled up hard as I added a little power to the front wheels. Wheeee! The back wheels broke loose and made a beautiful circle around the front wheels. I let off the hand brake, steered back to the right and caught the lane perfectly and drove on down to turn right on Westside St.  Back when I was a teenager in California, we called this maneuver a Brody. Great fun!

I bet those people waiting at the light thought there was some crazy teenager at the wheel. Worse! Some old white haired codger reliving his youth with a wicked grin on his face.

We weren’t too surprised to find the doctor’s office closed and dark. Both Texas and Oklahoma are having rolling blackouts because they are not equipped to handle this kind of weather. Even if they had snowplows, they can’t plow the city streets because they would remove thousand of raised reflective lane markers on the streets. The only snow removal equipment we saw was a road grader out on highway 70 slowly peeling packed snow off the right lane. If he doesn’t get some help, we might get the highway plowed by March.

So we turned back and went back home. The only trouble was at that stoplight by Walmart in the middle of the banked curve. Last time there was a pickup stranded there, but it was clear when I arrived today. Unfortunately the red light lasts about two minutes, and I couldn’t drive slow enough to avoid having to stop and wait. 

When the light turned green, I had to turn to the right and slowly crawl the tires up the bank and across the intersection until I could get a little speed going and find enough traction to continue forward. 

For the life of me I don’t understand why they piled up a tall bank of soil to create a banked curve, forcing side roads to climb a hill to get up to the highway, and then put a stop light right in the middle of the curve. It is so dangerous that trucks are prohibited from turning left onto the highway from the north, because the sudden banked slope tips them over if they are the least bit heavy or fast. Years ago I made this same turn in my RV and dumped all the dishes out of the upper cupboards.

The logical solution would be to tear out the whole intersection and lower the grade about 15 feet, make the curve flat (It’s not that sharp a curve) and allow side traffic to approach on the level. Today, I suspect it would be impossible to climb up out of the What-a-Burger driveway, and difficult to get up the slope from Walmart with out chaining up or have studded tires on a four wheeler. 

Well, I guess that’s enough fixing all that is wrong with the world. We continued on back to the house with no further trouble, as there still were no cars on the road besides us. 

We are snug inside the house again, hoping the electricity hangs on for the next week or so. 

Today was fun, reminding me of younger days in Colorado and Northern Nevada. I got to practice some of the tricks I learned the hard way in colder climes. If you want to hear a long tale, ask me about how many ways I have been stuck and had to winch out, jack out or dig out.

It took me years to convince my wife Carolyn that the whole fun of four wheeling is to see how far from home you can get stuck!