Ice Drive!

"It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step into the Road, and if you don't keep your feet, there is no knowing where you may be swept off to."
Bilbo Baggins

Ice Drive!

posted 02/09/04
It was a cold December and I was sick for Christmas. January, we were snowed in and by now I was really starting to get cabin fever so for "no particular reason" as Forrest Gump would say; I decided to drive to Portland Oregon. Well I did have one reason to go. My best friend was remodeling his garage and that sounded like enough entertainment to drag me off the rock in the middle of our winter. OK, maybe it’s a "guy thing" but it was enough of a reason for me.

Note that I said "drive" not ride. Even I know that motorcycles and snow don’t mix. I was tempted to take the sidecar but lack of a windshield and the cold Polar Bear ride on Jan. 1 were a good inoculation against stupidity. I hate to admit to learning most of my lessons the hard way but there it is. The tuitions high in the school of hard knocks but the education is superb…if you survive!

I set Jan. 6 as my departure date and called my friend to let him know that I was coming. He allowed as to how the weatherman was talking more snow and ice for their area but I decided that in a car, I was impervious to such trivialities as that. I did delay one day as we were still frozen in our driveway and I couldn’t get to the ferry but that wasn’t giving in, that was just a strategic delay. I was going on Wednesday the 7th and my plan was to follow the advancing thaw south to Portland.

As I disembarked on the Anacortes side from the ferry, this plan seemed to be holding. The roads were wet and the snow melting. I did stop at Les Schwab for a set of chains for the car "just in case" but figured they’d see little action this trip.

Out Hwy. 20 the snow became sparse as I approached the freeway. I was a little surprised to hear on the radio that I-5 below Olympia was closed but I just wrote that off to an early morning warning that hadn’t been cancelled due to it’s dramatic impact. I’d watched enough of this weather silliness the past week in Seattle to even come up with a trendy sounding name for it: "The Cassandra Effect!"

It works like this. At the first possibility of a flake of snow possible, not sighted but possible mind you, all TV stations go into severe weather mode and scatter reporters to the bread aisle of local grocery stores where they interview people about preparations for the coming end of civilization as we know it. Other reporters go to the battery department at Home Despot and focus cameras on any bare shelf as a sign of hoarding and the end of civilization as we know it. Government officials are rounded up and are heard to speak in solemn tones about the end of civilization, as we know it.

Of course, after the "storm" strikes, reporters drive all over the country telling us that the roads are impassable and can’t be driven on and that we shouldn’t be out driving! After the storm we can count on the week in review and stories about the poor souls who were without power for 12 hours and whose kids were without electronic toys for that time. I waited with bated breath for the casting for the made for TV disaster movie!

As I traveled south of Mount Vernon I was surprised to see the sparse traffic slow to a crawl and start moving to one lane on the right. An 18-wheeler that had turned turtle turned out to be the cause. Two "truck wreckers" were trying to right it and the State Patrol had about a dozen troopers guiding traffic around the activity. I figured that must have happened during the early morning when some of the thawing water momentarily froze and caught the trucker by surprise. The roadway was wet and thawing now.

Just north of Marysville, my Fearless Wife called on my cell phone to advise that my Portland friends had called our home to let me know that conditions were awful below the border. I told her about the advancing thaw-wave that I was in and promised that if things really looked bad, I would find a motel to hole up in. A little white lie of course as I knew the thaw would keep moving south with me but it was easier to tell her that that to try to engage in a long distance dialogue.

Traffic was light so I tried calling my friend in Portland to get his take on things but his phone was busy so I dialed up a friend in LA to see how things were down her way. "70 degrees" she replied so I knew the thaw was going to work out. I finally got hold of Portland when I was south of Seattle and my friend’s wife said when she heard my voice, "Oh I’m so glad you went back home. The weather here is awful. Nothing’s moving."

"Actually, I’m on the road Anne. I’m around Federal Way and things are looking good here. Almost no snow by the roadside and none on the road." To make her feel better, I repeated my little white lie about pulling over if things got too bad. Women! A guy goes for a little drive to get rid of some cabin fever and they get so pessimistic!

After that experience, I decided that I wouldn’t talk to any more women that I would only talk to men. Men understand these things. We are all born with the "driving gene" (isolated last year by a Detroit research team) and men know that stopping for the weather is tantamount to asking for directions in a strange city; i.e. it just isn’t done!

I called my old college buddy who lives in Vancouver Washington. "Hey Tom, how’s it goin’?" I asked as I cruised through Olympia.

"Not too bad. Are you coming down next week?"

"No, I’m coming down today. In fact, I’m only about 100 miles away."

"OH MY GAWD! DON’T YOU KNOW HOW BAD IT IS DOWN HERE?"

Well I just hate to see a good man go soft so I ended the conversation as soon as gracefully possible and just concentrated on driving along. The traffic was phenomenally light and I was making better time than most recent trips in good weather. So far I’d only seen a little rain and lots of clouds. No snow.

Around Centralia, the sun even made a guest appearance! One thing that did show up in the melting snow that was a little sobering were numerous gouges in the dirt on the roadside and across the median where cars had taken excursions during the worst of the storm 48 hours ago. The barrier in the median had many, many breaks in it. I knew Washington drivers were inexperienced in slick conditions but the numbers of accidents was huge! There were at least half a dozen showing in every mile from Centralia south.

Just before Woodland, the sun set and I could see a dark cloudbank on the horizon. I wished my little Honda car had an outside thermometer readout, as I was a little concerned about black ice sneaking up on me. Lacking that, I used the "digital method" and tapped the brakes every mile or so to test traction. ABS made that a safe technique. In a mile that turned out to be un-needed as I drove into a blinding snowstorm and the freeway became a white mass of ice and compacted snow.

Traffic slowed to a crawl and 18-wheelers were pulling over to chain up. There were cars and trucks scattered all over the roadside and in the median. Most of them were right side up but some were not. It was as if I’d driven into a disaster movie set. I tuned in a Portland station on the radio and found out that I-5 wasn’t just "chains required" south of Portland, it was "closed!" There was only one thing to do now…Press On!

I kept using the brake tap method to test for traction as I headed south. The ABS would trigger every time now but the car would still stop though slowly and it would steer too. As long as sudden changes of speed and direction were avoided, I was in control. I was doing 40, it was dark, there was snow coming down, and ice below my tires. It doesn’t get any better than this for curing the winter blahs!

Traffic was light with a line of trucks moving on the right at 30 mph. They were fully chained and throwing a blizzard of snow behind them. I was one of a few cars in the "left" lane, actually, the left space on the freeway. Because all lines were covered, the freeway was five lanes wide! When I passed a truck I may have been in the left lane, the parking lane, the middle lane, or the frozen median. It just didn’t matter.

This wide-open effect turned out to be a blessing a few miles later. For reasons that I can’t fathom, people love to bunch up when conditions are bad on the roads. Heavy rain and low visibility? Bunch up! Blowing snow and very little traction? Yup, they bunch up. I was by myself between wolf packs of big rigs when the ubiquitous 4X4 came right up behind me and started tailgating. Now there are the equivalent of four lanes all around me but he wants to snuggle in about three feet from my bumper and follow me. A few miles later there is a pack of ‘em. They didn’t want to pass me; they just want to snuggle up. I decide that its time to pull over and encourage them to pass so I signal right and start to move over.

Did I mention that there is at least 6" of snow and ice on the road now? And that it’s got a high ridge in the middle of the lane and an even higher one between lanes? And that it’s frozen solid, very solid? Try to get out of this grove and you become a slot car with all of the limited lateral control of a freight train. I quickly found myself a guest to momentum and let me note that when you travel down the freeway sideways in front of traffic, those people give you respect! And room, lots of room! Suddenly I was the crazy guy in the Honda; the typhoid Accord of the I-5 corridor. Well, at least I had some space for a while.

As I got into Vancouver, the road was even worse and I seriously considered stopping and putting the chains on but in the urban center, there was simply no room to pull over so I just kept going, crossed the Interstate bridge and kept my fingers crossed when it came time to exit and head for the side streets. Fortunately, my friends only lived a short distance away from the freeway.

The surface streets were a mix of glaze ice and rutted snow. When I pulled over to park, my wheels cracked though a thick crust and the car was anchored. I couldn’t move it. I almost couldn’t move myself as the crust was over a foot of gently undulating snow and was so thick that I couldn’t break through. All I could do was slip and fall. The walk from car to door was by far the most dangerous part of my trip so far. That night, the snow, and ice storm continued and the next morning there was 1.5 inches of ice on top of everything.

We weren’t going to do much garage remodeling in this weather so we worked on his kitchen instead. We were shut-ins for the day but at least we had something to do. That afternoon I gingerly ventured out and put the chains on the car so I could meet my Vancouver friend for dinner. This set an interesting pattern. Everyone had been shut in for three or four days and they were running out of bread, milk, and videos! When I showed up with a working vehicle, we went shopping and they bought me dinner! Not a bad trade.

After a week waiting for the thaw to arrive it was finally time to drive home. The Portland area was still in the grip of the Glacier but the roads were now semi passable. As I drove north, there was less and less snow until finally, I turned into my own driveway and it was 40+ degrees and spring like with almost no snow to be seen.

I’d been threatening to go in search of winter last fall and even though it finally came to the San Juans, it was even more fun to go visit the heart of the ice and get out of the rut. I’d seen the worst silver thaw (what Portland calls an ice storm) in decades, had a pleasant drive (really, I enjoyed it!), a little adventure, mooched some great dinners. Not a bad week.

The Old Squid

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