Slushing Through The Snow

On this stretch of I-90, about 120 accidents were reported. Click on the picture to see the 10 mile eastbound backup. Westbound was fine.

This is a stretch where the buffalo roam. We couldn't spot them. I guess they went home.


We spent Christmas with relatives in our home town over on the eastern side of the state. They have real snow as opposed to the wimpy Seattle area. I enjoy driving around town on Christmas Eve when it’s snowing and traffic is fairly light. There was generally around six inches of loose snow on the streets, so everything has a real soft muffled sound and it’s rather bright with all the light reflecting off of the snow.

It was snowing pretty well when we left town. The snow continued across the two mountain passes and finally let up about 30 miles from Seattle on the downhill side of the second pass. We were driving our front wheel drive minivan with all season tires (I’ve used the Toyo Z8000’s from Les Schwab’s for years and on several vehicles.)

The road was mostly slush, which is often the worse condition. Compact snow and ice is fairly constant, but slush can be deceiving. The road may not look too bad, but slush will often feel like a sudden hard pull to one side. Several people apparently experienced this sensation on their trip across the passes. During the trip we saw the following:

Older Subaru spun out in a snow bank with its rear end up in the air.

Jeep Grand Cherokee spun out in a snow bank with its rear end up in the air.

Jeep Wrangler spun out in a snow bank with its front end up in the air.

Large black sedan spun out in the median of the interstate.

Element or Scion (couldn’t tell for sure) also spun out in the median.

The first three vehicles are of particular interest. Surprisingly, four wheel drive is not a panacea for winter driving. The vehicles may go faster, but they’re not going to stop or corner any better. I see this proven year after year.

Merry Catmas

Expanding on a theme from Melissa.

Merry Catmas from Bob

Bah Humbug from Cleo (aka The Grinch)

Elementary My Dear Watson

My recent post regarding The Elements by Tom Lehrer, reminded me of another elementary experience.

A few years back we decided to upgrade the windows in our house. The common replacement at the time was double pane windows filled with argon. We found a company that sold triple pane windows filled with krypton. Krypton, being a heavier element, should provide better insulation than argon. Probably doesn’t make a huge difference, but these windows came with an exterior beige finish which matched the house and a nice wood-grain finish on the interior.

The day before the installation, we thought that maybe we should have shopped around a bit more. So we called the local utility to see what they had available. The utility representative and his wife came out that evening with samples of the standard ugly white non-paintable double pane argon filled windows that seemed to be the norm.

We decided against the utility company offerings and told the man about the windows we had decided to go with. “Krypton?” he said. “There’s no such thing as Krypton.” Then he made some comment regarding Superman.

“Gee dude, remember seventh grade science class?” Apparently not.

So he left. A few hours later he called to tell us that indeed krypton was real.

We thanked him for the information, and are now enjoying our triple pane krypton filled windows. Hmm. I wonder if a xenon upgrade is available.

Windy In Seattle

Seattle got a little bit windy last night. We came through it alright compared to some folks. The neighbor's tree took out part of our fence, but I tacked it back together, sort of like a jigsaw puzzle. I'll properly repair it at a later date.

We lost electrical power and our broadband connection (Oh horrors!) for about 14 hours. Fortunately we have a gas stove and water heater, so could still cook and take hot showers. The temperature got down to about 57 degrees here inside the house.

I had parked my Jeep on the side street rather than in front of the house as usual. This morning there was a 20 pound branch laying in the street where the Jeep would normally have been. Could have easily taken out the windshield or more, so I made the right call on that one.

We took a stroll around the neighborhood and took a few pictures.

Test Post - Comment Problems

This is just temporary post to checkout some Blogger comment problems.

Anyone reading this, please leave a test comment.

Please also mention if you use Beta Blogger or the Old Blogger.

Thanks,

Updates:

Beta Blogger appears operational.
Anonymous comments appear to work with Old Blogger.
Main problem is Old Blogger when using a registered name.

Braving The Elements

While performing a Google search I stumbled upon a link to one of my all time favorite novelty songs: Tom Lehrer’s “The Elements”. It’s been around for decades, but I hadn’t heard it in a long time. I searched around and found several video clips that had been made. Here are some of the better ones:

The Elements - Easy to follow the words.

The Elements - Words with a few pictures.

The Elements - Only pictures, probably most humorous.

The Elements - Pictures and periodic table data.

Being a former nuclear reactor operator and an ace atom splitter, this song has always held special meaning for me. Well before the existence of the internet, I used my trusty cassette player and slowly transcribed the entire song. Each of the kids took a copy of the cassette and the lyrics to their middle school science classes. The song seemed to amuse the teachers and children alike. It still amuses me.

Hope all you modern major generals enjoy it.

Desperate For Snow

Our neighborhood does get heavy snow on occasion as noted by the van picture on the sidebar. Often times when the Seattle area gets hit with a snowstorm, our little area remains a mini sun belt. Annette was out for a noontime walk a few days ago and took a picture of this young lad desperate for a place to sled.


Wet grass sort of works, but that bare dirt at the bottom makes for a very quick stop.