Permafrost is Nature's Long Johns
(Originally left for dead in my blog at CaptainOfTheInternet.com)
It's Monday, 2:41 A.M.
Earlier this evening, I had a headache: the kind where you feel a large vein somewhere inside your skull, and it's angry and throbbing, and you wish you could just have an operation to open your head up and widen that sucker's passage, like with a threaded balloon or something like that like they do with heart attack patients. I don't know what I'm rambling about. I'm just happy that the headache has subsided for the moment. I laid down for a couple hours in the dark and listened to my wife watching Charlie's Angels in the livingroom.
Pretty soon this isn't going to be our apartment anymore. The current plan is that on Friday, the movers are going to come and leave us with a bare apartment. Then, we're going to leave, ourselves, sometime before Saturday afternoon to drive to Seattle. The goal is to hit the Oregon border around daybreak. It's of utmost importantance that we get to drive through Oregon during the day. It's been raining almost non-stop here in California for the past three weeks and that means snow up north, and lots of it.
The part of our drive we need to be scared of is a little section in the south-west of Oregon where the 5 interstate passes through a switchback pass in the Cascades mountain range named Siskiyou Summit Switchback. You can see a cool live webcam of current conditions in the pass, here. A couple of days ago, chains were required through the pass and they had snow plows running 24 hours a day. Since I last checked it though, they've downgraded the restrictions and it's now just required to have chains in the car, ready to be put on at a moment's notice.
I've been reading some tips on winter driving put out by the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) and I'm not sure if I feel better or worse about the whole driving through snow thing. This is all quite new to me. ODOT recommends carrying in the car: a scraper and brush, snow shovel, jumper cables, and a bag of sand for tire traction. Also suggested is an emergency kit with road flares, a blanket, heavy boots, warm clothing, and a flashlight with extra batteries.
Okay, I can see all that making sense. Then the tips start taking a survivalist bent. For instance, when traveling through an area with snow, it's recommended to not let your gas tank get below three-quarters of a tank. For one, your fuel lines could freeze if you turn off the car. For two, if you're trapped in a blizzard, you'll need the gas. You're supposed to stay in your car and run your engine (for the heater) ten minutes out of every hour. That way, you can survive for a couple days. Are they freaking kidding me? I'm going to have a wife and two hysterical cats in the car. And I have to worry about them freezing to death?
Maybe they don't want to scare us about the real dangers of traveling through Oregon in the winter. Maybe they're downplaying it so as not to interrupt interstate commerce. They need their Nintendos and televisions just like us, and I-5 is the only way they're going to get it. So what if most people don't make it? Most will.
I'm considering taking along a few cords of firewood, a week of food, and five gallons of water, just in case. Maybe I should also bring snow shoes, emergency flares (the kind you shoot up in the sky), a hatchet for fending off wolves, a fishing pole to help supplement our food stores, a tent, a propane stove, pots and pans, and eskimo-style jackets and clothing. We could live there in the snow until spring when it would be safe to hike our way out. I could even order a few pounds of whale blubber from the internet to help round our plans out, we could stuff it in our pants in an emergency.
Dude, I'm freaking out. We're going to fucking die.
(Originally left for dead in my blog at CaptainOfTheInternet.com)
It's Monday, 2:41 A.M.
Earlier this evening, I had a headache: the kind where you feel a large vein somewhere inside your skull, and it's angry and throbbing, and you wish you could just have an operation to open your head up and widen that sucker's passage, like with a threaded balloon or something like that like they do with heart attack patients. I don't know what I'm rambling about. I'm just happy that the headache has subsided for the moment. I laid down for a couple hours in the dark and listened to my wife watching Charlie's Angels in the livingroom.
Pretty soon this isn't going to be our apartment anymore. The current plan is that on Friday, the movers are going to come and leave us with a bare apartment. Then, we're going to leave, ourselves, sometime before Saturday afternoon to drive to Seattle. The goal is to hit the Oregon border around daybreak. It's of utmost importantance that we get to drive through Oregon during the day. It's been raining almost non-stop here in California for the past three weeks and that means snow up north, and lots of it.
The part of our drive we need to be scared of is a little section in the south-west of Oregon where the 5 interstate passes through a switchback pass in the Cascades mountain range named Siskiyou Summit Switchback. You can see a cool live webcam of current conditions in the pass, here. A couple of days ago, chains were required through the pass and they had snow plows running 24 hours a day. Since I last checked it though, they've downgraded the restrictions and it's now just required to have chains in the car, ready to be put on at a moment's notice.
I've been reading some tips on winter driving put out by the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) and I'm not sure if I feel better or worse about the whole driving through snow thing. This is all quite new to me. ODOT recommends carrying in the car: a scraper and brush, snow shovel, jumper cables, and a bag of sand for tire traction. Also suggested is an emergency kit with road flares, a blanket, heavy boots, warm clothing, and a flashlight with extra batteries.
Okay, I can see all that making sense. Then the tips start taking a survivalist bent. For instance, when traveling through an area with snow, it's recommended to not let your gas tank get below three-quarters of a tank. For one, your fuel lines could freeze if you turn off the car. For two, if you're trapped in a blizzard, you'll need the gas. You're supposed to stay in your car and run your engine (for the heater) ten minutes out of every hour. That way, you can survive for a couple days. Are they freaking kidding me? I'm going to have a wife and two hysterical cats in the car. And I have to worry about them freezing to death?
Maybe they don't want to scare us about the real dangers of traveling through Oregon in the winter. Maybe they're downplaying it so as not to interrupt interstate commerce. They need their Nintendos and televisions just like us, and I-5 is the only way they're going to get it. So what if most people don't make it? Most will.
I'm considering taking along a few cords of firewood, a week of food, and five gallons of water, just in case. Maybe I should also bring snow shoes, emergency flares (the kind you shoot up in the sky), a hatchet for fending off wolves, a fishing pole to help supplement our food stores, a tent, a propane stove, pots and pans, and eskimo-style jackets and clothing. We could live there in the snow until spring when it would be safe to hike our way out. I could even order a few pounds of whale blubber from the internet to help round our plans out, we could stuff it in our pants in an emergency.
Dude, I'm freaking out. We're going to fucking die.