We get settled in the Power Wagon, down off the hill, through the Mount Baker Tunnel and and across the floating bridge.
The Floating bridge has always amused me. There is something anti-logical about a major highway being supported by floating boxes made out of concrete. It has mostly worked well, except for the time they were working on it and left some of the doors to the pontoons open when a storm blew in. Major portions of the bridge are now a fish sanctuary. Of course they replaced the sunken portions, but the concept amuses me. Mostly.
Out through Issaquah where the forest meets the city. The weather was typical Pugetopolis in November. Gray skies and something between a mist and drizzle dropping on us. At about the Denny Creek exit, the fog/mist/drizzle became freezing fog, and the wiper blades had all they could do to keep the stuff off of the windshield.
The last couple of miles up Snoqualmie Pass were a pain in the butt, but as often happens, once we got over the top the skies cleared up, which I was glad to see. What I was not happy to see was the road covered in black ice.
For those of you not familiar with the concept, let me diverge for a second. Black ice is insidious, because you are not sure it is there until you hit it, and then it is generally too late to do anything about it. A thin layer of water on the road froze on the road, When you see it, it just looks like the road is wet, and you can continue to travel on it as long as you do not accelerate, decelerate touch the brake or gas pedal or attempt to turn even slightly, at which time you will begin to lose control of your vehicle. What usually happens is the back end of the vehicle begins to travel in a very slightly different direction than the front end. You MUST not do anything sudden like step on the brake. Hopefully you will have enough maneuvering room to SLOWLY AND GENTLY encourage the front of the car to realign itself with the back. If you don't panic or over react, that is all you need to do. What usually happens is you over correct which swings the front end of the car too far over and you begin to travel down the road sideways. So you over correct in the other direction, and at that point you spin in circles while going forwards. At this point there is not much you can do but take your foot off of the accelerator and let the vehicle have its way. Hopefully it will travel in a more or less straight line down the road until it comes to rest. Then you will sit there with your hands shaking and in a state of shock for about 20 minutes, until you came to the conclusion that you and your vehicle and fellow travelers are intact. Then you SLOWLY get the vehicle underway and up to some careful speed.
With the Power Wagon, this speed is 45 miles an hour. Up to 45 the truck will handle OK. 46 miles an hour and you can feel the back end start to move around.
When we hit the top of the pass, it was black ice as far as the eye could see. We found this out by losing control and ending up sideways on the edge of the road, with Liz doing her "Oh My God I'm Going to Die" scream in my right ear. When I am doing my best to get a sticky situation under control, screaming in my ear is not at all helpful.
When we got stopped she was saying "I think we should just turn around and go home. This is obviously way too dangerous. No sense in risking life and limb."
Seeing as she had just maligned my ability to handle the weather and road conditions, I commenced to get pissed off. I told her "You can get out here if you want, but the truck and I are going to go on, so unless you want to walk I suggest you buckle up you seat belt and hang on."
Once I knew we were on black ice, I just put it in four wheel drive and dropped down a gear, and everything went OK. More or less.
We had gone as far a Lake Easton when I saw blinking tail lights on the side of the road and a guy in a business suit frantically waving on the side of the road. I have gotten myself stuck a few times and someone always came along and lent me a hand, so I felt obligated to stop. Of course this was over the objections of Sis "You don't know who this person is, they might be an axe-murderer!" "That's why you get to talk to him. I'm going to pull along side, you roll down your window."
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Friday, April 29, 2011
Chapter XV
The first decision was which vehicle to drive. As I said, I have several, and enjoy each of them in a different setting. If it was high summer and the weather was decent, I would break out the 1960 Jag Mark IX and float down the freeway in style, But seeing as it was November, and the weather was due to be crappy, I had to forgo that particular choice.
The choice was coming down to a couple of alternatives.
The Blazer S10 4X4 was pretty good all around in all kind of weather. It had taken me into and out of a lot of places. But the forecast was questionable and road conditions were expected to be icy. The Blazer was a little light for the trip. So I opted for the big Dodge Power Wagon.
It was heavy enough that nothing was going to slow it down, and it was geared so that in the lowest of lows it could practically climb a tree. With the winch I could get out of just about anything. It wasn't fast and it wasn't pretty, but it would get you wherever you wanted to go, and back again. If you had to ask about gas mileage, you shouldn't own it.
And besides. my sister hated it. That was always a plus to my way of thinking. Although I was reasonable environmentally conscious, my sis was a fanatic, and it would bug her all the way to Idaho to be in a huge gas guzzling fire breathing exhaust belching behemoth. And besides that it wasn't pretty. It had done honorable battle with brush and trees and ditches and mud and water and snow and sand. The two tone blue and white paint was several different additional colors. Rust and primer of several shades as well as mud and muck.
Liz Lived in an upscale area of Queen Anne Hill. I could feel her cringe as I pulled up, hoping none of the snobs in the neighborhood saw her getting into the truck. Al least she was only carting a couple of carry-on bags. I don't understand the impulse that drives women to pack everything AND their good shoes when they are going to some place like La Grange. There is no high class accommodation. The local restaurant and taverns would be a waste. She knew I would never put up with her usual six bags. Besides, if she brought them, they would go in the bed of the truck, since there wasn't that much room in the cab of the truck. Her expensive shoes would be ruined by the time we got there. I packed a single gym bag, and figured I had everything I needed and then some.
The choice was coming down to a couple of alternatives.
The Blazer S10 4X4 was pretty good all around in all kind of weather. It had taken me into and out of a lot of places. But the forecast was questionable and road conditions were expected to be icy. The Blazer was a little light for the trip. So I opted for the big Dodge Power Wagon.
It was heavy enough that nothing was going to slow it down, and it was geared so that in the lowest of lows it could practically climb a tree. With the winch I could get out of just about anything. It wasn't fast and it wasn't pretty, but it would get you wherever you wanted to go, and back again. If you had to ask about gas mileage, you shouldn't own it.
And besides. my sister hated it. That was always a plus to my way of thinking. Although I was reasonable environmentally conscious, my sis was a fanatic, and it would bug her all the way to Idaho to be in a huge gas guzzling fire breathing exhaust belching behemoth. And besides that it wasn't pretty. It had done honorable battle with brush and trees and ditches and mud and water and snow and sand. The two tone blue and white paint was several different additional colors. Rust and primer of several shades as well as mud and muck.
Liz Lived in an upscale area of Queen Anne Hill. I could feel her cringe as I pulled up, hoping none of the snobs in the neighborhood saw her getting into the truck. Al least she was only carting a couple of carry-on bags. I don't understand the impulse that drives women to pack everything AND their good shoes when they are going to some place like La Grange. There is no high class accommodation. The local restaurant and taverns would be a waste. She knew I would never put up with her usual six bags. Besides, if she brought them, they would go in the bed of the truck, since there wasn't that much room in the cab of the truck. Her expensive shoes would be ruined by the time we got there. I packed a single gym bag, and figured I had everything I needed and then some.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Chapter XIV
All this flashed through my mind between the crackle and hiss of the bacon frying in the morning. It was kind like dream time. When you are in dream time it seems like hours have gone by, but when you check the clock, it has just been a couple of minutes.
This whole trip down memory lane had been precipitated by an offer on the Home Place from the power company. A mile or so up the road from our place, the road took a little joggle and when it recovered it's senses it was eighty feet to the West of where it had been.
Snuggled right up in that joggle was a power station. Been there forever. Also seemed that someone was always going straight instead of joggling and taking down the power lines. Didn't do a heck of a lot of good for the driver either.
So a couple of things were going to happen sort of all at once. The State Department of Highways wanted to straighten out the road for a couple of reasons. Back at the turn of the century when they were logging off the old growth, they would hold the logs in a holding pond up the stream from where we were located, and when the Spring flood came they would release the logs to ride the flood down to the lake. That made the stream a navigable waterway. Most of the summer you could not even "navigate" an air mattress down the stream without a lot of portaging.
The highway crossed a gully right where the main stream intersected the little rivulet from our property, and the road occasionally washed out. But because it was a navigable waterway, the DOH could not impeded or otherwise interfere with its natural flow. By moving the road eighty feet East they would eliminate that whole problem. But that meant that the Substation needed to go. It also meant that the main house, the barn, chicken coupe, hog pen and milking parlor had to go. The proposal was that the State of Pandemonium would condemn the buildings and buy the westernmost five acres of land, and then the Power Company would buy the rest of the section, put the new and improved power station on the South west corner and leave the rest as nature preserve to get green credits to offset whatever nasty shit they were pulling somewhere else.
I was all in favor of taking the offer, but Sis was having a considerable trouble turning loose.
It was HOME, it was the FAMILY CASTLE, it was our LEGACY, wrote all large on the Earth. But neither of us was going to drop our lives out here on the coast and move back there to manage the place. As far as the State seizing the property, there was nothing that could be done. The property was going to be condemned in the interest of "The greater Good". That's a term the Government uses when they are about to screw you. Just relax and think of the greater good while we screw you. There was enough of the hard headed Irishman in me to want to bow my neck and dig in my feet, futile as that might be. But I was reminded of the cartoon I saw of the little mouse standing there giving the owl the finger right before he became a former mouse.
The letter from out Attorney had come in the mail the day before. laying out all the details. It all looked all legal and proper. I couldn't see any reason in delaying the inevitable, so I called my sister to set up the trip.
"Oh Pat, I can't see how you can be all so calm and unemotional. This is THE HOME PLACE". the way she said it, it sounded all in capital letters, too.
"Lizzard Breath, we've been over this a bunch of times, so drop the hystreonics. It's business and we don't have a whole lot of choice in the matter. I'll pick you up in the morning about 8:00"
"EIGHT? That's like the middle of the night I don't even get up that early when I go to work."
"Well. that's the time your transportation leaves, and if you don't want to walk, take the bus or charter a small plane, you had best be ready. And dress warm. Probably nothing will go wrong, but it's best to be prepared."
This whole trip down memory lane had been precipitated by an offer on the Home Place from the power company. A mile or so up the road from our place, the road took a little joggle and when it recovered it's senses it was eighty feet to the West of where it had been.
Snuggled right up in that joggle was a power station. Been there forever. Also seemed that someone was always going straight instead of joggling and taking down the power lines. Didn't do a heck of a lot of good for the driver either.
So a couple of things were going to happen sort of all at once. The State Department of Highways wanted to straighten out the road for a couple of reasons. Back at the turn of the century when they were logging off the old growth, they would hold the logs in a holding pond up the stream from where we were located, and when the Spring flood came they would release the logs to ride the flood down to the lake. That made the stream a navigable waterway. Most of the summer you could not even "navigate" an air mattress down the stream without a lot of portaging.
The highway crossed a gully right where the main stream intersected the little rivulet from our property, and the road occasionally washed out. But because it was a navigable waterway, the DOH could not impeded or otherwise interfere with its natural flow. By moving the road eighty feet East they would eliminate that whole problem. But that meant that the Substation needed to go. It also meant that the main house, the barn, chicken coupe, hog pen and milking parlor had to go. The proposal was that the State of Pandemonium would condemn the buildings and buy the westernmost five acres of land, and then the Power Company would buy the rest of the section, put the new and improved power station on the South west corner and leave the rest as nature preserve to get green credits to offset whatever nasty shit they were pulling somewhere else.
I was all in favor of taking the offer, but Sis was having a considerable trouble turning loose.
It was HOME, it was the FAMILY CASTLE, it was our LEGACY, wrote all large on the Earth. But neither of us was going to drop our lives out here on the coast and move back there to manage the place. As far as the State seizing the property, there was nothing that could be done. The property was going to be condemned in the interest of "The greater Good". That's a term the Government uses when they are about to screw you. Just relax and think of the greater good while we screw you. There was enough of the hard headed Irishman in me to want to bow my neck and dig in my feet, futile as that might be. But I was reminded of the cartoon I saw of the little mouse standing there giving the owl the finger right before he became a former mouse.
The letter from out Attorney had come in the mail the day before. laying out all the details. It all looked all legal and proper. I couldn't see any reason in delaying the inevitable, so I called my sister to set up the trip.
"Oh Pat, I can't see how you can be all so calm and unemotional. This is THE HOME PLACE". the way she said it, it sounded all in capital letters, too.
"Lizzard Breath, we've been over this a bunch of times, so drop the hystreonics. It's business and we don't have a whole lot of choice in the matter. I'll pick you up in the morning about 8:00"
"EIGHT? That's like the middle of the night I don't even get up that early when I go to work."
"Well. that's the time your transportation leaves, and if you don't want to walk, take the bus or charter a small plane, you had best be ready. And dress warm. Probably nothing will go wrong, but it's best to be prepared."
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