Monday, however provided me with a wee bit of unexpected excitement. All the weather forecasts had been saying that my area was not going to get hit with the snow & sleet but they were off just a hair or two.......
Pulaski had no snow or precipitation when I docked but while I was getting unloaded & reloaded this started
See, snow flakes but nothing on the ground yet.
Three miles south on Hwy 31, we have this
Another couple of miles....
And the road just became completely covered from that point on.
As I approached Interstate 65 I could hear the cb chatter about south bound being shut down because several trucks and cars had spun out on the "big hill". Great..........I have less than 16,000 pounds loaded onto the trailer with NONE of it being on or near the trailer tandems. Several trucks had pulled over onto the flatter parts of the ramp but when I tried to do the same to wait it out the trailer kept sloooowwwly sliding towards the ditch and the rock wall so I just proceeded on down the ramp to join the crowd on the interstate, lol.
A guy in front of me decided to get out and play
As you can see the road is not that terribly bad but evidently too many vehicles were bunched up together when this first started and that's always the time when the road is the slickest.
Welcome to Alabama
This guy went into the median to avoid some cars that were spinning around in the road
Everybody merging over to avoid the RV, cars & big trucks that were spun out in the right lane
Chugging up the hill--note the following distance :-)
Trucks that spun out
Love this rest area :-)
Ok, automatics always get a lot of flack about not being any good whatsoever on bad roads and yes, there are a very few occasions where I've run into a bit of extra trouble but usually if you are aware of the road conditions and the limitations then you can work in and around bad weather just as well as you can in a manual transmission. And for those other times, well that's why you should always carry non-clumping kitty litter with you in the winter. A couple of handfuls of that thrown down around the tires and those guys that were spun out could have been rolling again within a matter of minutes. An automatic can always be switched over to manual override but I didn't bother with that coming up this hill because it wasn't that bad. A slow, steady pace and being more than a car's length away from the vehicle in front of you can do absolute miracles with keeping ya going in a straight line (I do realize all bets are off with ice).
4 comments:
Thats so weird, it almost seemed like Ol Man Winter was following you Gabby. Really tho, i have seen lots of bad winter driving scenes in the snow on the flats, but your adventure up & down the icy hill was the absolute worst driving conditions that i have seen with my eyes, You really amazed me Gabby, seeing you chugging up that hill put my heart up into my throat!
hmm, it sounds like you drive an automatic? i didn't know that, lol all i ever drove for 20 years was automatics, did i ever tell you that my left leg is my good leg? ;-]
Nice Blog, thanks for sharing your story.
Eric.
Eric,
quit being silly!!! Somebody might read that & actually believe you :)
As we talked about before, the conditions weren't that bad. Yep, I've been in an automatic truck for the past 7 years, some with a clutch pedal, some without.
Gabby
Okay, so the conditions weren't that bad "For You" Gabby, but my eyes saw that guy who went into the median to avoid some cars that were spinning around in the road, plus the RV, cars & other big trucks that were spun out in the right lane (on that hill) surely they must have thought those conditions were pretty bad,.. like i did? :p
Tanker Yanker was here :)
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