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AJC.com > Metro > View from the cop > Archives > 2008 > January > 16
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Skiddish about driving in ice and snow?
A few clues that you're losing your grip
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Winter months are especially hazardous to Atlanta area drivers. There are only a few weeks each year that present the opportunity for dangerous driving conditions in the form of ice and snow. It is important to recognize when road conditions become hazardous so that you can take immediate action. Here are some examples of changes that may indicate a decline in weather and road conditions.
While in the car, look for the following clues that icy road conditions are too severe to drive:
You’re driving backwards when you had no intention of doing so.
You’re driving driving sideways when you had no intention of doing so.
Both No. 1 and 2.
You can see the car next to you, then the car across the street, then the car next to you, then the car across the street. This should be recognized as a sign that you are spinning out of control.
You have an ache in the pit of your stomach that the bumping sensation your car is displaying may have something to do with pedestrians.
You can see the pedestrians next to you, then the pedestrians across the street from you, then the pedestrians next to you, minus one, then the pedestrians across the street from you. This is an indication that you are spinning out of control while hitting pedestrians at the same time.
In your mind, you clearly want to stop for the red light but it just isn’t happening.
You can see the guy next to you smile and wave goodbye as you pass each other going backwards.
Again with the pedestrian next to you and then across the street. It seems there are not many left.
And finally….Please be careful and make sure the rear-view mirror is clean.
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When police die, where are activists?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Today is one those days that I could do without. I got in the car and as I headed down the road, I heard the radio report where two police officers in DeKalb County were shot and killed this morning. I guess it’s a sharp reminder that no one is immune from all this crazy violence.
My first thought was how ironic it is that it happened in DeKalb County. I would guess those people who demanded all the investigations of police-related shootings and the police have a common bond now.
I wonder if they’ll show up, with their agenda-ridden activism, to support the families and fellow officers of these two officers.
I doubt it.
A lesson of sorts about ice and snow
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Here we go again. Sleet and ice expected. This is the only time that Atlanta’s weather goes north. I hate the one or two times a year it happens but when it does, you would think the end of the world was near. I have written about this before but it warrants a second look. The bottom line is we don’t have enough really bad weather to justify a bunch of money for snow plows and other snow stuff. What we do is suck it up for a week each year. Sometimes it happens twice meaning, more than anything else, the insurance adjusters will be occupying most of the bar seats during happy hour. We hate ice and rain. We rarely see snow and we really don’t know how to act in it.
The last big snow that hit put 4-5 inches on the ground. We lived way up in Cherokee County in a neighborhood of first-house owners. In those days we were all pretty close and quick to make a social occasion of anything. So snow and icy roads was a perfect opportunity for us to gather outside and do something stupid.
None of us had a sled so we appropriated someone’s wheelbarrow, took the wheels and skids off of it and presto, we had a sled.
We lived on a sharply inclined street that went straight up where it dead-ended at my house. As you went down it, the street leveled out just before crossing an intersecting street. We weren’t quite sure how far the wheelbarrow would go once it got up to top speed so, to ensure safety, we had Darryl get on his riding mower and guard the intersection in case the wheelbarrow made it past that point. He could then tow the wheelbarrow back up the hill on the mower.
Skeet, who was a little wiry guy, started in on the hot buttered rum a bit earlier than anyone else and immediately volunteered to take the first ride. If successful, he would cover about a hundred yards and then cross the road while Darryl held traffic. All bets were placed on who could travel the farthest. Each of us would take a run and the winner took all.
On the first run, Skeet tried a bobsled move by pushing the wheelbarrow for a few yards and then jumping in. It was legal since we had not yet forbid it. The wheelbarrow however, was moving faster than Skeet so when he jumped, he missed it completely, sending it down the hill unoccupied. It did however give us a gauge on the distance so we went ahead and placed our bets. While Darryl drug it back up behind his riding lawn mower.
On the second try, Skeet got about 20 yards down the hill before he hit a mailbox that ejected him onto the roadway while the wheelbarrow ricocheted in the other direction and through my neighbor’s front yard, killing a small plastic gnome. We drug the wheelbarrow back up the hill and then discussed trajectory strategy at our new impromptu bar that we built out of cinder blocks and some 2 x 4’s. Behind the bar was a nice warm bonfire (which became the final resting place for the gnome.)
During the short break in the action, Darryl apparently became bored so he walked back up onto his driveway and started working on his unfinished weekend project involving a 50-gallon drum and a welding torch. In the meantime, my neighbor and his girlfriend, a girl whose name escapes me but her fondness for Quaaludes does not, walked up the hill, which took some time due to her frequent falls.
In an effort to make the run more efficient, Skeet proposed that we position the wheelbarrow directly in the center of the street, noting that on the first run it hit the groove along the curb, which caused it to hit the mailbox. It seemed like a good plan so we toasted the plan and the wheelbarrow was placed in the center of the road. All bets were taken and we toasted the gnome, which was now on fire and producing black smoke, and prepared for action.
It is amazing to me how timing can be so perfect and so imperfect at the same time. In my opinion, at that very moment, all of the planets of the universe aligned just enough to cause the following sequence of events:
My neighbor’s girlfriend, stoned and bruised from falling down half a dozen times, apparently mistook the wheelbarrow for a chair. At that very same moment, Darryl applied his welding torch to the upside-down fifty-gallon drum. Just when Skeet turned around and said “Dude, is that your girlfriend?” I turned around and saw the wheelbarrow, containing my neighbor’s girlfriend, begin its descent down the center of the street, moving much faster than anticipated. That immediate thought was shattered by the loudest explosion that I had ever heard in my life.
As I looked up I remember seeing the 50-gallon drum flying through the air, leaving a trail of bluish-gray smoke stretching from the driveway to it’s current position, some fifty feet in the air. Darryl was lying on his back on top of the large Juniper bushes that lined his front porch. The wheelbarrow containing my neighbor’s girlfriend was racing down the hill towards the now unguarded intersection. Her legs were pointed straight up to the sky like some sort of bizarre sailing ship masts. I suddenly realized that we had grossly underestimated the wheelbarrow’s capability of speed and I was sure that we were on the way to making the evening news:
“Two people were killed today when a fifty-gallon drum exploded, vaporizing a welder and sending a woman down a large incline in a wheelbarrow whose wheel and skids were blown off by the blast. The woman was killed when the wheelbarrow impacted a large cow, standing and possibly mooing for help as it stood in a pasture at the bottom of the long roadway. Local residents said they did not hear the blast that broke out windows for miles around, and did not recall seeing an impromptu bar, located at the end of an off-duty police officer’s driveway.”
You could hear a pin drop among us at the impromptu bar. In slow motion, our eyes were glued on the 50-gallon drum, following its descent back to earth, landing just behind the wheelbarrow, now traveling at Mach 4, and closing in on the intersection. Just beyond Darryl’s body, still lying in the Juniper bush, and whom we now assumed was dead, a deputy sheriff’s patrol car slowly approached the intersection. I was quite sure he was interested in the sonic boom that originated some 30 yards from his car.
Although I had a strong urge to run, I couldn’t take my eyes off of the wheelbarrow as it approached the intersection where the deputy sheriff, now stopped and out of the car, was standing in the road holding any traffic that might be approaching. I was now sure that we would all go to jail.
Just as fast as the wheelbarrow was heading to doom, it all ended.
The wheelbarrow did in fact rocket well past the intersecting roads but thanks to a sharp incline just past it, the wheelbarrow slowed to a stop some 50 yards beyond. My neighbor’s girlfriend was still intact and assisted out of the wheelbarrow by a couple of teenagers.
The deputy recovered and then delivered my neighbor’s girlfriend back to the top of the hill with some advice—something about getting her sober and getting her some underwear. (A month later they broke up after she almost burned his house down shooting off bottle rockets in the living room.)
Darryl survived the welding explosion although he had to shave off what was left of his seven-year old beard and twenty-five year old eyebrows. We didn’t see him for a month.
As for us, in order to satisfy our bets previously made, we planned to race the wheelbarrow down the hill again but having seen how fast it could move, we made some safety changes in the form of a cinderblocks from the impromptu bar. We tied the cinderblock to a rope that was tied off after running it through one of the holes where the wheelbarrow handles used to be. We figured the driver needed to throw the cinderblock out, at some point, as he approached the intersection. In theory, it should stop the wheelbarrow in a reasonable amount of space. In reality it didn’t work all that well.
Towards the end of Skeet’s first and only run, he veered off to the right and took out his second mailbox of the day. The sudden stopping of the wheelbarrow however did not deter the forward motion of the cinderblock which caught him upside his head, sending him to La-La land for a few minutes. His wife, who was never all that social to begin with, later demanded we cover for the co-pay at the ER. As a tribute to Skeet’s future lost freedom, we did.
The moral of the story? There is none except, unlike me, please be careful in this mess and remember that ice, snow, welding torches, and vapor-filled fifty-gallon drums may seem like a good idea at the time but like Oprah, should be taken in moderation.
