peelman.us

While I was spending most of the time cooped up in the cab of my Dad’s Ford this evening, others were busy finding errors in my handiwork here

Correction

Professor Ray Hansen, who I can now entitle as one of my former supervisors, pointed out that towards the end of The Change We Need I mentioned that this was the first time we’d had a Democratic majority in both Houses of Congress AND a Democrat in the White House. I seem to have been very wrong there. It has, in fact, happened several times in the past. I don’t remember seeing *that* many Democratic presidents on the roster, but the answers lie here, and clearly show that in the last 60 years almost 20 of them have been spent with the Democrats in majority rule. But I will point out that its only been once in the last 30 years, twice if you count the incoming administration and Congress among them. Kudos to Ray for pointing out such fallacies

Hell on Ice

For those not following me on Twitter or Facebook, Dad and I went to do our yearly last-minute christmas shopping today. Unfortunately, we were struck by a mis-predicted ice storm, brought on but a sudden drop in temps and off-and-on showers all day onto an already frozen ground. We ended up finding no fewer than 5 detours home, which turned what should have been a 1 hour trip into almost 7.5 hours of Hell on Ice and consumed almost 3/4 of a tank of diesel fuel.

We had one more stop to make around 4:30 and afterwards were heading home. On the way into the Honey Baked store i noticed the parking lot was getting slick but didn’t really think much of it other than “Damn its cold!”  So we’d just picked up the honey baked hams for Christmas dinner (and leftovers!) and had to stop at a shop in Hebron, KY for some gifts.  The trip between those two locations should have taken 10 minutes but took almost an hour.  Fender benders on the somewhat slick roads were slowing everything down.  Leaving our last stop, we noticed the roads were starting to ice over and there were warnings being issued on the radio to stay off the roads if it at all possible.  I-275 was already backed up from accidents, so we decided to take a detour and hopefully get back on the interstate ahead of at least some of the mess.  The road looked more-or-less straight on the GPS.  This was where things got fun!

There’s nothing quite as scary as the feeling of being at the helm of your dad’s 11-month-old Ford F250 (lariat, crew cab, diesel, 4×4) on what could be graciously called a highway in middle-of-nowhere, Kentucky, only to discover a hill, covered in ice from top to bottom, full of twists and turns, with 6 cars already stopped or in the guard rail at various points. Well we made it across at least 3 of those, before coming to the Grand Finale.  I made it about 1/3 of the way to the top before coming up on a Pontiac, broadside in the roadway, at which point i gave up and we parked the truck (we later made a failed attempt to get back down the hill without ending up in the hillside or the guardrail.

We were there close to 2.5 hours until finally a highway department truck finally made it through and heavily salted the hill, melting what ended up being around 1/2″ of accumulated ice on the road.  And allowing us and several of the others who had collected there to make it to the top.  To give you an idea of how slick and steep it was: you couldn’t stand up straight without sliding down the hill, it was impossible. Keep in mind I’ve spent 7 years dealing with Purdue’s Ice Polishers™ (That’s where they affix power brooms to the front of small tractors to do “snow removal” on the sidewalks, which works ok on the snow, but as a side effect it smoothes and polishes the ice that is always underneath, making it impossible to USE the newly cleared sidewalk without the risk of personal injury), I have experience with slippery ice, and this stuff was WORSE.

Once we got off of that hill, we discovered that the bridge across the Ohio River on I-275, aka our only quick way home, was closed down completely and traffic waiting to cross was backed up almost 15 miles. There’s more than one way home, however, and between the truck’s GPS and both mine and dad’s knowledge of the back roads we figured we could find a faster way home that didn’t involve sitting for 3-4 hours while awaiting our turn to get back on the interstate.  So we headed back to Florence to head down I-75/71, the plan being to circle around and come across Markland Dam, just a few miles south of home.  Within 20 minutes we were back to a dead stop, this time because of an unknown issue.  No icy bridges on that road, and we were so far back in teh line of cars we couldn’t begin to see the front.  So we sat and tried to wait it out.  For another 90 minutes.  Both of us were about to go stir crazy i think.  Then we decided our time was better spent trying to find another way around, which resulted in us driving all the way to Dry Ridge, KY and circling around, getting back on the interstate near Glencoe, KY, where traffic was moving slowly but otherwise normally.

So Dad and I have already agreed, next year, the day after Thanksgiving, he and I are sitting down with laptops and credit cards, and doing all of our shopping from home.

Merry Christmas / Happy Holidays to those 3 loyals readers I have!