Slip slidin' away to Tucson

Our first travel days have included chain saws and an all-night drive from Lapeer to Valdosta, Georgia in frigid temperatures.

So when plans began for Winter Trip 2014, it never occurred to me, but probably should have, that we would be leaving during the worst cold snap in Michigan for two decades. The only redeeming part of that was that I didn’t have to hitch up the trailer or drag it because it is already enjoying the fine Arizona winter.

Leaving behind a snowy, cold Michigan

We always plan our trip departure for the day after the January blood drive that I coordinate at my American Legion Post in North Branch, Michigan. For a while, when something called the Polar Vortex, swooped down and swallowed America I began to think I had wasted a week in Arizona to hold a blood drive that no one would venture out to attend. I would have been wrong.

The North Branch natives are a tough lot and while our numbers were down slightly, we still ended up with 32 blood donations on a day when the high temperature for the day was a great big goose egg number.

Tuesday started at -14 degrees and warmed to a high of 0 degrees by day’s end. Tuesday night the temperatures fell again into negative territory and stayed there long enough to make packing the car pretty miserable on Wednesday morning. The temperature was -2 as we pulled out of Lapeer. It eventually fell to -5 at some spot along I-69 approaching Lansing.

With a house sitter in place, we pulled out of our recently cleared driveway and made a quick stop at the daughter’s work to grab a latte and hot chocolate to start the trip.

No roads have been salted in Michigan since Sunday and Monday’s storm because salt is useless in the extremely low temperatures we have endured since Sunday night.

I-69 was pretty much one good lane and one lane that can best be described as the world’s longest skating rink. What that means is that you are at the mercy of the slowest car on the freeway.  We still made decent time and I was able to get around most of the slow pokes.

It was so cold that I noticed that icicles were hanging off the muffler pipe of a car driving in front of us. Clearly it was the muffler shroud, but still it seemed very odd to see. My father taught me to watch my vehicle gauges and I noticed that yesterday and today the engine temperature did not reach its usual 210 degrees until well into the trip after temperatures had warmed a little.

During the day it slowly edged up as we headed south and at our first fuel stop south of Ft. Wayne, Indiana it felt practically balmy at 17 degrees. It almost had me changing into a t-shirt. The traffic lanes in Indiana varied from “clean and green” to “not nice ice.” The road conditions changed drastically from moment to moment.

If I ran the world I would make the brake pedal much harder to use on a car, especially on icy roads. Sometimes the worse action a driver can do is slam on the brakes when confronted with ice, but despite that many, many drivers seemingly panic when the find suddenly they are riding on a sheet of ice.

Instead of letting a little speed bleed off the car they stomp on the brakes, which causes a chain reaction that puts at risk everyone behind them.

If you are one of those people who slam on the brakes while driving on a sheet of ice, consider yourself slapped upside the head. It’s much easier to maintain control and keep pointed in the right direction if you use the gas pedal and a little distance to keep out of trouble.

Before I go any further, let me just apologize to all the mothers of some of those drivers who were called names that I should never have used. You are not what I said, but your driver children pushed me to it.

With muddy, melting roads my windshield washer got a real workout and I may have to buy yet another bottle of windshield washer fluid to make sure I have enough to get to Tucson. I will soon need a new set of wipers too.

So we passed through Indianapolis shortly after noon, including a drive-by of Lucas Oil Stadium, the scene of Michigan State’s recent dismantling of Ohio State University on its way to a Rose Bowl win. I symbolically tipped a hat to the stadium as we passed by. Symbolically because both my hands were firmly grasped onto the steering wheel for nearly 10 hours.

When I planned this trip I estimated, considering the Central Zone time change, that we would be through St. Louis downtown traffic about 4 p.m. a little before rush hour. What I didn’t plan for was a 100-mile stretch of I-70 through Illinois that was littered with hundreds of spun out cars and semi  trucks and trailers.

Only a slight exaggeration of I-70 today

Most of the cars and trucks were deeply buried in snow banks and medians and it had the appearance of the so-called “Highway of Death” left behind by retreating Iraqi soldiers feeling Kuwait in the first Gulf War.

Looking at all these stranded and abandoned vehicles I imagined I felt like one of the surviving water buffalo watching one of my kin being taken down by a lion.  Sorry for my brother water buffalo, but also glad it wasn’t me.

I need to ask Kevin, a professional truck driver I know, if he has ever experienced having his trailer pass by his tractor. That must be a frightening and scary moment when you realize that you are headed the wrong direction in the right lane and that your trailer is now in front of you. We are hopeful no one was seriously hurt in any of those crashes.

At various places, we slowed to a crawl, and on the eastbound lanes traffic was stopped for 4 miles while huge tow trucks worked to haul out some of the wrecked semis.

Between some earlier slowdowns when the road ice caused us to slow down and the major traffic hold ups in Illinois on I-70 I missed by estimated time of arrival by a good two hours. Because of that we stopped on the Illinois side of the Mississippi River to have dinner about 6 p.m. (Central Time) to allow some of the rush hour traffic to dissipate. Probably wasn’t necessary as traffic was very light, but heck I was hungry and the Ruby Tuesday’s garden salad bar is one of my favorites.
Tomorrow: Oklahoma City. I smell a steak in my future.

Time out: 7:50 a.m. (EST)

Mileage out: 66995

Time in: 7:10 p.m. (CST)

Mileage in: 67611