Snow advisory!!!

The snowfall today was slightly heavier than yesterday...

Ok, the snow yesterday was a light dusting. It was nice, and we all had a good time. We got to see what it was like to drive in snow, and the fun of loosing traction on ice. Today was a little different. Today we did not have a “light” dusting. It was more like a never ending snow fall. We decided to take the dog for a drive across the street to an open field that he enjoys. It was a good thing that it was so close, because the roads were starting to become covered in snow. The good part was that there was not much traffic.

Upon getting back into the car, Dianne and I agreed that it would be a great idea to go and get something to eat. We agreed that McDonalds would be a good choice since it was quick and easy. We ordered our respective meals, picked them up, and began to drive away. That is when we noticed it. Well, it seems that while we were waiting in line (all 2 minutes of it) the roads had disappeared. Yep, now we were driving on freshly snow covered roads. Oh isn’t this fun. No markings to tell which lane you are in, no cars in front to follow, and no idea where the curbs are. Fun, fun, fun.

Well, we followed a fellow that seemed to be heading in the right direction, and made it home. We decided that it would be best to stay indoors for the rest of the day until the snow let up. Later on that day I noticed that the snow had stopped falling. It seems that we had received about 6” of snow. The car was covered in snow, the roads were covered in snow, and the trees were covered in snow.

The snow made driving quite a challenge

Now most people would look at that and say, “hmmm, I should probably stay indoors”. Not us. We decided to go to the field that we had been to earlier today. As we attempted to exit through the gate, the car would just rev up and the wheels would spin, but nothing would happen. After several attempts I had Dianne back up and I opened the gate. She got a “running” start, and zipped through the gate. I hopped in and down the street we went. As we approached the road, we noticed something strange. The road was now not only completely covered in snow, but it was packed down so tight that it was now a huge sheet of ice. Crossing was done very carefully and with great care. After exploring the new snow fall, we decided that it would be a very good idea to go home and wait for the roads to be plowed. Going home we only lost traction once and was able to regain control of the vehicle in a matter of seconds. Once home, we both agreed that it would be a better idea to call for takeout if we decided we wanted any food.

So far I have learned that studded snow tire only help if you are not driving on a solid sheet of ice. If you are, all they do is make nice scrape marks in the ice. Stopping on ice is quite a challenge. Always give twice the distance you would normally stop in. If you start sliding on ice you will be happy that you did. Never go faster than you are willing to crash at. On ice, anything can happen. And finally, when you see a guy ice skating down the sidewalk, you know it is time to go home.

Blizzard!!!

This is the view from the back porch

This morning we woke up to a winter wonder land. Snow had fallen all night long, and everything was covered in a blanket of pure white snow. As I went onto the back porch, I could tell that it was still snowing. It was coming down pretty heavily. Large clusters of snow fell like cotton balls from the sky.

Dianne asked me what it was like outside. My response was, “I think we had a blizzard. We must have 5-6 feet of snow on the ground”. She just laughed and said, “yea, right. I just listened to the news, and they said it was more like half an inch”. Hey, half an inch or 6 feet - what’s the difference?

I think we may need to get an ice scraper for the windshield.

Walking the dog was an adventure. We took him to a location that had considerably more snow than anywhere else. Being the inquisitive and adventures dog that he is, he decided to go into the largest snow bank that he could find. Well, he thought that was really great until he walked a little too far and was buried by snow. He quickly turned around and headed back the other way. He would not make that mistake again.

All in all it was a fun and productive day. We were able to see how snow tires work in real life. It seems that you will encounter the most ice when you are trying to get home the fastest. Especially after you just went to Taco Bell, and just want to get home to eat. Other than that, it was just another wonderful day in a winter wonderland.

Studs, Ice, and Snow

These are the new snow tires (or at least one of them). The studs are not as large as I would have liked, but they were out of the ones with 2" spikes. Notice the ACTUAL snow on the bottom left of the tire!

Dianne does not like it when I call it vibration. She says that it is just a little noisy. Vibration is still the word I would use to describe it - the tires that is. The studded tires to be precise. They vibrate. They make a strange humming noise when we drive down the road. It is not totally unlike driving on loose gravel, or on studded tires, but then I guess you would have to have studded tires to know what that was like. Each tire has about 23,902 studs. They are just little metal protrusions that stick out from the tire. I was told they are made of some alloy that even Superman uses on his Bat mobile, or something like that.

We just had them installed. It only took about 5 hours. That is a long time when you are waiting at Sams Club. We were told that they would only be about 3 hours at first, but then it turned into 4, and then 5. We went to lunch at a Mexican restaurant across the street. It took us 2 ½ hours to finish, and they still were not done. In the meantime I decided to walk around the store. I ended up at the pharmacists counter. I talked to the pharmacy and asked if they could give me anything for my irritation and inpatients. They said they had all sorts of goodies that would help, but I would need a doctors note first. Just for fun I pulled 2 out of my pocket and said, “ok, here - I think these will do”. I think the pharmacist almost passed out. I don’t think she was ready for me to pull out 2 scripts during that conversation. I had been to the Dr. earlier today to get set up as a patient, and start my new collection of pharmaceuticals. Since the drugs he prescribed were very cheap, I decided to get them filled just for fun.

To celebrate our new tires, we decided to drive over and across as much ice as we could find. Luckily for us there was quite a large puddle that had frozen over in the past several days. We decided to drive over it first. When we got there it was a frozen mass just waiting to be driven over and cracked into a thousand pieces. As we drove over it, something very strange happened. Actually nothing happened. We just drove over it and across it. Usually we hear ice cracking and breaking under our tires. It is the gratifying sound of driving over ice that you just broke. Not this time. I think we may have waited a little too long. The ice had frozen over so much that it was now solid. No cracking, no crunching, nothing. Not even a little break. When we went to the second location, it was the same thing. No crunching, no cracking, not a bit of noise. I tried to convince Dianne that we should try to drive across a shallow lake, but she reminded me of how expensive it would be to get the car fixed after we had it pulled out of the frozen mud. I realized that she was probably correct and agreed that it was probably not a good idea.

So now we have snow tire, and not a bit of snow on the ground. We do have ice, but it is not on the streets, and nowhere near being a threat. I will wait. I will wait for the 6 feet of snow, the 4 inches of ice, the sleet, the frozen rain. I am prepared. I am ready. Bring it on!!!!

AMENDMENT: Last night at about 12:30pm it started snowing and has not stopped since. The timing on the snow tires could not have been better!!

Moose Wednesday

Today I had a sick van. I had a feeling that it needed some work, but I had no idea to what extent. You see, it has been having some “steering issues”. You know, the type where you are going down the road and the car just veers off to one side and when you go to correct it, nothing happens. It can get kind of unnerving if you are headed towards a brick wall, or an oncoming car. So yesterday I took the thing in to get an oil change and had them look at the steering system to find out what the problem was. After some time I was informed that the inner tie rods were shot and that I probably needed to have my hubs tightened. I was then informed that after installing the new tie rods, I would have to have an alignment. No big deal, I was expecting the alignment.

Today the car is in the shop getting all it’s little “issues” fixed. After getting the inner tie rods replaced, the hubs tightened, and an alignment, I will still have to go looking for studded tires. Yes, I know, I know. I have been talking about this for quite some time, but I am a professional procrastinator. My motto is, “never do today what you can put off till tomorrow”. It seems to have worked relatively well so far, so I have no plans to change it. I also have another motto. It is, “everything in excess”. Together they make me an extreme procrastinator (I wonder if there is an ultimate sport for procrastinating?). In any case, it seems that we will be getting some snow next week. The snow is really not what bothers me. What is concerning me the most is the fact that the temperatures will be going in and out of the freezing range for several days. That tells me that the snow will be melting and then turning to ice. Ice is bad. I have enough problems steering a top heavy van on wet roads, much less on an ice skating rink without studded tires. So the words for the week are: Get studded tires.

After picking up the now fixed vehicle, I began to drive home. As I was driving I had a little chat with the van. We discussed that although it was an older van, it was very much liked and we wanted to keep it around for a while. To do this we needed to keep it out of the nasty shop where they suck money out of the owners wallets like a Hoover. I discussed the downside of being taken to a used car lot, or worse yet, a junk yard. I explained the process of dismantling and parting out cars, and how easy it was. I think my point was well made. I do not expect any more problems for quite some time.

Upon arriving home, I was happily greeted by Dianne. She informed me that Nick had made some new friends while I was gone. She asked me to guess who they could be. I guessed a tree, a cat, another dog, a ferret, a rabbit with a squirrel on its back riding bike. All wrong. She went on to tell me that while she was laying down reading a book, Nick decided to go out on the porch and began to bark. She told him to “cut it out”, but he just proceeded to bark louder than ever. Not being able to read her book while the dog barked constantly, she got up to see what he was barking at. As she pulled back the curtains, she was greeted with a smiling full grown moose staring her right in the face. She rushed Nick off the porch, and went back out to get a closer look (I think she was only 3 feet away the first time…). As she ventured out on the porch, she noticed that the moose had a baby in tow. She was now close enough that if she wanted to, she could have reached out and touched the mother moose. They both paid her no attention, and went about there quest for tasty leaves and twigs. Thankfully there was a railing between them that kept the moose and Dianne away from each other. All I would need is to come home and find that Dianne had adopted a stray moose and calf. As much as I enjoy walking Nick, I refuse to walk a moose at 3 in the morning.

After reliving a great moment in time that I missed, we decided to go get groceries. Just the normal everyday stuff. What would have taken me 10 minutes, took Dianne 45 (she has shopping issues…). On the way back home, as we were driving past a very small park that is right next to the road, what would we see? Another moose. This time it was a fully grown male with a gorgeous rack. He was just lazily grazing on the tasty tender grass. We went out later that night to see if we could find any more moose, but it seems that they all go to bed by about seven thirty. Either that, or there is a moose bar that I don’t know about…

SAIC

How exactly is that name pronounced?

This company just went public, and in quite a big way. Seems that they were the volume leaders today. Not bad - not bad at all. Perhaps I should acquire some of this firm? I wonder if they would let me tour the building?

Food of the Gods

Notice the tools used to free the meat. The butter was melted and used as lubrication.

Last week Dianne advised me that the local Fred Myers was having a sale on King Crab Legs. She stated that they were like $8.88 a pound. I believe that normally they are $2,398.92 an ounce, so this was a really good deal. We decided to get two pounds and see what happens. If we didn’t get incredibly ill, or start seeing things we would go back and get more. As it turns out, we would be making another trip before the day was out. Since then my favorite food has been changed to king crab legs. The problem is that I will only be able to afford them about once a year, or whenever they go on sale. In any case, getting to the meat was almost as much fun as eating it.

Just looking at the enormous crustaceans was rather intimidating, but I had the power of boiling water, hot melted butter, and several large hand tools on my side. After heating up the spiny crustaceans, we got to work on de-Skeletonizing the little devil. The legs were relatively easy to crack. The meat flowed freely from its thorny confines in enormous chunks. It was soaked in warm melted butter and eaten with revelry. The claws were a whole different matter altogether. Although they were even more flavorful than the legs, they required a Herculean effort to extract from their shells. After realizing that they were not going to yield to bending or even a wack on the counter, I pulled out the big tools. A pair of channel lock pliers made short work of the shell. Some would argue that the correct technique would be to use the back side of a knife with a sharp wack to the claws. I disagree. Just the feeling of raw power holding a set of pliers about to crack open a crab leg is justification enough for the overkill. Besides, it was quite effective, and very fun. Dianne was somewhat concerned about the fact that I did not wash the pliers, or even wipe off the light oil film that was still on them, but once she tasted the sweet meat, she understood why I had chosen not to sterilize the cracking instruments. Well, that and the fact that the oil seemed to add a little flavor…