Winter 2014/15

[TimeForGuinness]

I live on a road with a pretty steep hill that is a perpendicular connector of two fairly busy roads that run parallel. I was out shoveling this morning and some little POS car was trying to attempt to go uphill to get to the other road. It's steep enough (and slick enough from the snow) at the top that you pretty much just have to look both ways and run the stop sign to turn onto the road. If you come to a complete stop you are screwed. This car came to a complete stop and was screwed. Spun out for awhile before starting the backward slide. Made a few more attempts and eventually had to just go in reverse all the way back down and go a different way.

The whole time one of my neighbors a few houses up was sitting there in her car in her driveway waiting for this person to get un [expletive] and had her window rolled down screaming at this person "THE RULE IS: IF YOU DON'T LIVE ON THAT ROAD, YOU DON'T GO UP THAT ROAD" like three or four times. Which.....what? I don't even know what that means. When the guy finally backed down the hill and left she comes tearing out of her driveway in a fishtail and comes flying down the hill doing her best "I have a Jeep Wrangler so I'm bulletproof" thing. She gets to the bottom with way too much speed and goes sliding through the intersection straight into the ditch on the other side. I about died laughing. She's lucky no cars were coming to T-bone the hell out of her.

This is the best post

[tlombard]

I get the safety thing. I used to live in an area where I couldn't get to work if there was snow (huge hills to get out of my complex that were really long) and once I had to walk a mile home through the snow and cold because I got stuck at the bottom of two hills thanks to a car in front of me causing me to lose my momentum when they stopped for no reason on the hill. I couldn't get up either way and had to park in a parking lot and walk home. Never messed with the snow from there after that. But at the same time I don't think today was that bad in St. Louis and we have two ladies who are about to retire and they made it. The one guy's wife was already staying home with the kid so that isn't his excuse. It just really rubbed me the wrong way when he sent the one girl a message about how tired he was after shoving the driveway and was going to take a nap when she actually had the balls to get up early and shovel her driveway and then drop her kids off somewhere and had zero trouble getting to work on time. Heck, they don't do anything to the side streets in the city and I got here on time via the bus and train. Everything (including a bus that goes within three blocks of the guy's house in Ballwin) was right on time and there were no reported delays across the system. If those things can get through narrow city streets that have not been touched in any way with no problem then he is just being a sissy kind of like the 'sprained ankle' last week where he was not limping one bit when he came back the next day.

Meanwhile customer service only had one person call off today because of the weather. Of course they can't work from home and if they don't show up, they don't get paid without taking time. I also started in customer service and while I've been salaried for nearly two decades now, I'm still partial to their plight and get annoyed when others blatantly take advantage of things while they bust their rears for pennies compared to some who don't do nearly as much actual work (but is deemed more valuable).

[jim]

I live on a road with a pretty steep hill that is a perpendicular connector of two fairly busy roads that run parallel. I was out shoveling this morning and some little POS car was trying to attempt to go uphill to get to the other road. It's steep enough (and slick enough from the snow) at the top that you pretty much just have to look both ways and run the stop sign to turn onto the road. If you come to a complete stop you are screwed. This car came to a complete stop and was screwed. Spun out for awhile before starting the backward slide. Made a few more attempts and eventually had to just go in reverse all the way back down and go a different way.

The whole time one of my neighbors a few houses up was sitting there in her car in her driveway waiting for this person to get un [expletive] and had her window rolled down screaming at this person "THE RULE IS: IF YOU DON'T LIVE ON THAT ROAD, YOU DON'T GO UP THAT ROAD" like three or four times. Which.....what? I don't even know what that means. When the guy finally backed down the hill and left she comes tearing out of her driveway in a fishtail and comes flying down the hill doing her best "I have a Jeep Wrangler so I'm bulletproof" thing. She gets to the bottom with way too much speed and goes sliding through the intersection straight into the ditch on the other side. I about died laughing. She's lucky no cars were coming to T-bone the hell out of her.

This is the best post

That is excellent.

[lukethedrifter]

did she die or suffer nonfatal injuries?

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

We drove back from Nola to Little Rock yesterday. And, our plan was to drive until the conditions got bad and find a hotel room. This generally works, and I've done it before, but it requires 1. finding bad conditions and then 2. being able to turn around or 3. finding and getting to a hotel ASAP. According to google maps and idrivearkansas.com, traffic slowed down about 10 miles outside little rock, but was still moving. Also, according to idrivearkansas.com, there were patched of ice, but it was mostly clear.

Normally, this wouldn't be so bad as we could still turn around and get back to a hotel or find a hotel relatively quickly. But, BUT, I was following a semi. I had left about a half mile to a full mile between him and myself so I had plenty of room to stop if something went wrong...which it did.

We entered a construction zone where they turned the 4 lane divided highway into 2 lanes by entirely closing the northbound highway and shifting all traffic onto the southbound highway which now had 1 lane each of north/southbound. This meant there was a temporary lane set up between the north/south highways to transfer all the northbound traffic onto the southbound lanes. It also meant I lost line of site with my semi that I was following.....Sure enough, there was an exit just before the lane transfer that I could take, but I didn't.

As I pass the exit, and as I get on the temporary lane, I get to a point where I can see the semi that I was following; it has jackknifed and totally blocked traffic from passing. It jackknifed, I assume, because the road became a sheet of ice. Conditions had gone from dry to completely iced over in a matter of seconds. I can't stop at this point. There's no way. I can still steer, somewhat, but just tapping the brakes puts me into sliding mode. I've got maybe a quarter of a mile before running into the trailer of the semi that is now stopped and perpendicular to the road, completely blocking it.

Luckily I was able to drive through the median and get onto the northbound portion of th ehighway that is under construction and drive along it until the on ramp from the Exit took me back over to the actual lane I was supposed to be travelling on. But, I pooped my pants. That was scary.

[jim]

Wow. I pooped my pants reading it.

Glad you are ok.

Winter sucks.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

Anytime you're making a conscious decision to drive off the roadway, you probably made a bad prior decision leading up to it. I'm comfortable now saying we should have stayed in Pine Bluff about 30 miles south of there. But, prior to that incident, nothing had been wrong. There had been slush on the overpasses, but that was nothing. There had been patches in the left lane of the highway which was consistent with the website saying patches but mostly clear. And, to me a patch is like <50' of continuous ice. You can drive over 50' without much problem. That's just over a second of drive time at 30mph.

[JL21]

Holy [expletive]. That sounds terrifying.

[jim]

Last night I wasn't sure my furnace was working - and I'm still not 100% sure. It wasn't kicking on, I futzed with the thermostat (finally figured that mother [expletive] out after living there for 3 years). Turned the heat switch to off, then back to heat and then the furnace kicked in. All is well - until it stopped short of the temperature it was supposed to stop at. More futzing, then really getting worried, and then going down to the furnace and reading the instructions and manual and then making the decision that I would rather take a chance on freezing to death that trying to fix this damn thing. I could see little green computer lights inside, which is better than red, but no furnace. Saw a switch on the side, rebooting is always a reasonable troubleshooting technique, turned it off an on and then the furnace ran perfectly all night.

Any furnace people that would know what that was all about? If it happens again obviously I will call someone out, but I'm going to hold off assuming that something got confused and resetting it fixed it.

[Schlich]

I also spent Mardi Gras in New Orleans. 60s and 70s all weekend, it was beautiful. Then I come back to this BS.

Just read AW's story, thank god 55 was clear the whole way.