CigarStone
For once, knowledge is making me poor!
When @jfields John and I were hunting a few weeks ago in the Allegheny National Forest, it was right around zero degrees of a few above for a few days. I took my old 79 F-150 so that we could beat it up if we needed to in order to get into some even more desolate areas.
We would put his truck somewhere nearby in case mine broke down we wouldn't have to walk more than a couple miles. We started back a road I have driven a hundred times. My son and nephew and I call it Wormhole Rd. because people seem to get lost back in there as if they traveled through a wormhole.
We came to a huge puddle that I have driven through countless times, it is about 16 inches deep and 40 feet in diameter. When I got to it, someone had gone through it in the last day or so, but there were huge chunks of ice about 8 inches thick and two feet square sticking up, like a mountain range, at the beginning and end of the puddle. I stopped, John and I thought about it for a minute, and as it turns out we had very different thoughts. I thought that since someone else had gone through, I could surely make it. As I started forward I could swear I heard John say "this is really gonna be fun!" Later he informed me that he said "are you fuckin nuts?"
The first wall of ice chunks was frozen solid and was like hitting a building. Now I am in the middle of the puddle with my back tires still on the road but the front tires under about 16 inches of ice and water. I debated whether I should haul ass and bust through the other side, or try to back out. We chose to go backwards. After about 10 or 12 tries with no success and me feeling like I had been in multiple car wrecks, I finally got it out and John said "I was certain we were walking".
The worst part is that Johns truck was only 400 yards away, but he had no way of knowing that and I was not going to let this fucking puddle beat me. And it's quite possible that we could not have gotten Johns truck back to mine anyway.
The below picture does the scenario no justice but a picture is worth a thousand words.
We would put his truck somewhere nearby in case mine broke down we wouldn't have to walk more than a couple miles. We started back a road I have driven a hundred times. My son and nephew and I call it Wormhole Rd. because people seem to get lost back in there as if they traveled through a wormhole.
We came to a huge puddle that I have driven through countless times, it is about 16 inches deep and 40 feet in diameter. When I got to it, someone had gone through it in the last day or so, but there were huge chunks of ice about 8 inches thick and two feet square sticking up, like a mountain range, at the beginning and end of the puddle. I stopped, John and I thought about it for a minute, and as it turns out we had very different thoughts. I thought that since someone else had gone through, I could surely make it. As I started forward I could swear I heard John say "this is really gonna be fun!" Later he informed me that he said "are you fuckin nuts?"
The first wall of ice chunks was frozen solid and was like hitting a building. Now I am in the middle of the puddle with my back tires still on the road but the front tires under about 16 inches of ice and water. I debated whether I should haul ass and bust through the other side, or try to back out. We chose to go backwards. After about 10 or 12 tries with no success and me feeling like I had been in multiple car wrecks, I finally got it out and John said "I was certain we were walking".
The worst part is that Johns truck was only 400 yards away, but he had no way of knowing that and I was not going to let this fucking puddle beat me. And it's quite possible that we could not have gotten Johns truck back to mine anyway.
The below picture does the scenario no justice but a picture is worth a thousand words.
