I may have made a mistake

[George N. M.]

Around here black ice is so named because it is clear and makes the asphalt pavement look wet and blacker than dry pavement.  The problem on Interstate 80, which runs less than a half mile from my house, is that it is a major east west freight route and carries LOTS of semi trucks which compress snow into black ice from the weight of their wheels.  This also means that you get black ice more frequently in the right lane which carries more traffic.

When travelling I 80 in the winter the combination of black ice, regular snow and ice, Wyoming wind, turbulance caused by semi trucks, and lots of truck traffic can make things pretty sporty.  The 100 miles west of Laramie is known as the Snow Chi Minh Trail and is often closed in the winter and more often closed to light and high profile vehicles because of wind.

GNM

[Jason L]

We only get snow once a year or so but our roads freeze more than that. There are signs that say bridges ice first but it's been my experience that everything freezes all at once, usually in a single night. Most of the time it thaws enough shortly after the sun comes up and warms the blacktop. I don't think I've ever seen ice on our interstates, but to be fair, I don't spend a lot of time on them even when it's not cold. One thing I've noticed over the years is that the ground doesn't "spew up" as much as it used to. That's where ice juts up from the ground in jagged little shards. I don't know what caused it but it was satisfying to stomp around crunching the ice. Haven't seen it much in 30 years or more.

[Frosty]

When I moved here there were a lot of local sayings nobody uses now. One was, to paraphrase, "It only snows once here but it sticks for 7 months"

The crunchy "spews" you get are one action of FS soil (frost susceptible) as it freezes. What's probably going on is the soil has enough fines water doesn't flow (hydro static) so as it freezes and the ice expands it forces water to the surface where it freezes in little ice "fountains." Sometimes they resemble ice volcanoes. When I say "probably" going on, there are a number of other things FS soils do when it freezes, road beds have "frost heaves."

Modern road construction lays a bed of "large" gradation material to make a "French drain" bed so water can flow out from or pass through under the roadbed. It gets covered by a geotextile which allows water to pass but not fine soil particles which fill the voids in the drain bed plugging it. 

Ground freezes from the surface down and roads freeze sooner than original ground, (OG). As present moisture freezes and expands the easiest route for moisture to move is down, the pavement blocks upwards movement. Below the soils become more porous so it flows down and out the sides through the drain bed. 

This type road construction is based on the "Scandinavian" model (so to speak) and works well even when crossing saturated soils like a marsh. The road bed can freeze hard but subsurface water can still flow freely through the drain bed. Another really effective foundation technique is to literally float the road across it but that's an entirely different construction. It's really neat though.

Yeah, I used to deal with soil for a living, 20 of my 30 years with AK DOT was spent in the materials lab and exploration drilling. Every time foundations or "interesting" soils conditions come up in a thread it triggers something from better than 20 years of memories.

Fun stuff.

Frosty The Lucky.

[BillyBones]

We get black ice in the cold spots. Bridges are a prime example as well as under trees. Most of our winter is spent on that edge right at freezing or thawing. So just that 1 or 2 degree drop in temp in the shade is enough to get a thin sheen of ice in that spot. The bridges is becuase there is no ground under them to insulate. 

Slush is what i hate. If we get a decent snow fall the roads get slushy pretty quick. Then that night it all freezes and the next day it is like driving on one of the roughest roads you can imagine. 

[Frosty]

Slushy roads are more dangerous than icy ones, it only takes an inch of slush to cause you to hydroplane, the ice prevents contact with the pavement and the water takes you downhill. If you're lucky it's deep enough it slows you down but it can get hairy regardless.

Frosty The Lucky.

[Jason L]

We're lucky with our slush I suppose. Usually if it's slushy the ground never got cold enough to freeze. The accumulation only occurs because the snow lands faster than it can melt. Where the tires contact the roads it heats the pavement more so it's just wet asphalt with no ice. With enough traffic, even the black ice melts away. At night all bets are off. The temps dive and there's less traffic and no solar radiation to warm anything so the ice remains till something changes. We rarely have temps low enough to freeze the ground. Maybe less a week or so total and that's not consecutive. Puddles freeze but most of the time the ice doesn't survive past morning. I can remember as a kid having brutal ice storms every winter. Trees covered by a thick layer of ice would just start snapping apart and dropping limbs all over the roads. We don't see that much anymore. We used to have tons of tornadoes too, but now we get one or two a year. Every house around here older than 40 years or so has a storm cellar somewhere on the property. I have one on my land but it's overgrown and flooded all the time. I've never had to use it. Our weather has become much milder since I was a kid. Thanks for the lesson Frosty. What you are talking about describes what I used to see perfectly. I just don't see it much anymore.

[Frosty]

I think we're finished with slush for a while, it was 10f this morning but the trees are full of that wet heavy snow plus the next storm's worth so the forest is full of trees bent over, some severely. Now with the temps falling the trunks and limbs will begin to free meaning lots of trees breaking and power outages. Happily we have oil lamps, candles and good led flashlights.

On the up side really cold ice and hard pack snow isn't very slick, especially with modern radial tires, studded or not.  

I tend to get going on slick road driving it's sort of a standard talk to folk new to the country and ice happens all over the planet. 

If you ever come to my corner of the globe in winter I'll take you for some fun on a frozen lake. Fun stuff like drifting a car for a couple miles or back up brodies or just turning the wheel and locking the parking brake. It's not as much fun as hydroplaning in the old Zodie's parking lot on rainy days when I was a youngun but it's a blast.

Frosty The Lucky.

 

[Jason L]

That does sound like fun. We used to try and ride our bicycles on frozen creeks when I was a kid. Unsurprisingly we were not even close to successful. I may be weird but I don't mind the power going out. I've got flashlights but I only use them in the bathroom because I want to stay married. I have flashlights but I don't use them much. I prefer the soft glow of a candle paired with a good book. I should really make some candle holders. I'd really like to make a Betty lamp but I feel like there is some little thing that I don't know about that would cause it to dump burning oil all over the place. 

[BillyBones]

The place where my wife works has a huge parking lot. When i would pick her up from work it would be late and no one in said parking lot. So of course that meant doing doughnuts in the snow and rain. Quite fun. Then i got a new truck and i turn off the traction control and the stabilitrak but i can only get about 1 1/2 good spin. 

Me and my ex-wife used to sit in candle light a lot.  

If a Betty Lamp is what i am thinking it is, we made them out of mason jars when i was kid. Fill the jar about 1/4 way full of lamp oil. Cut a wick about half the depth, a bit less, of the jar. Take a piece of wire and make a spiral, pull it up so the spiral is a cone and the top small enough to hold the wick. Put the wick and holder in the oil in the jar. You could make a hanger or sconce to hold it, or just set it on a flat surface. 

[Jason L]

Yeah Billy, that us basically what it is. I want to hammer out at least one metal one. I've got a cheap old Stanley rolling tool box that no longer serves it's purpose so I've been cutting sheet metal out of it for different things, I thought I might make some small lamps or candle holders out of that. It's too thin to use for much but I can't bring myself to throw it away. There's a good bit of sheet metal in it. I drilled out the rivets on one of the drawers, cut out a piece of it and tried to dish it for a small lamp but it didn't go well. I think I'll just cut out pieces and see if I can braze it together or something. My dishing skills are not what you would call good. I do have material to practice with though so there's that.

[Frosty]

We didn't have frozen anything outside of a freezer or skating rink when I was growing up but it sounds like a fun way to fall a lot. 

The fat wheel bike is another thing. People been riding them on everything, there was even a shortened Iditerod trail bike race last year. 

Frosty The Lucky.  

[Jason L]

We were still a few years away from the fat wheel bikes. BMX bikes were starting to come on the scene and most of us still had the old banana seat bikes with no name. One kid had a Huffy with a big puffy seat. It was a girls bike but it was lighter and faster than most of our bikes and boy could it jump! I think it was one of the only ones that had tight handlebars and a chain that stayed on all the time. That may be because we weren't trashing it on frozen creeks or railroad tracks. It was a different time I guess. We were put out of the house first thing in the morning and left to our own devices all day with no supervision. Kids these days don't know how much fun there is outside. 

[BillyBones]

When we bought the house here a couple years back there was a washer and dryer left in the basement. I had just about a year earlier bought the wife a brand new set and she did not trust the dryer i "scrapped" them. That is several square feet of sheet metal i was not about to just throw away. It is kind of thin as well but i use it to make ladles with or wax catchers on candle holders. Small stuff like that. I can usually work it cold as well. I tried a piece for a fire place shovel but to me it just seemed to thin and it may have worked now but down the road i do not think it would have held up. 

I remember those days of the banana seat and puffy black Huffy seats. Having to hold the front wheel between your legs and straightening the handle bars. Ooooohh, the plastic 5 spoke rims. If you were fancy you had pads as well. Me and my freinds would go and find old bikes at garage sales and stuff then build our own. Fun times back in those days. Then i got a drivers license and a 1970 Nova SS.  

[Frosty]

Oh dude! 20" wheels, coaster brake, banana seat, sissy bar and ape hanger handle bars! The original, "Schwinn, Sting Ray bike"!  I had to look it up to see the details. Schwinn introduced it because so many people were making their own. There weren't that many kids who could afford a Schwinn seeing as most Dads thought a boy should have a "real" bike. 

At that time every sporting goods or department store had bunches of seats, sissy bars and "butterfly" handle bars on the shelf. I don't know that many kids who made one with the butterfly handle bars we all went with ape hangers. Unfortunately I could hardly ride it so I sold them and bought much lower ones though they were still taller and wider than the Schwinn style. 

My seat was metal flake sapphire blue and my sissy bar was only middle of my back. My friend Rod 3 houses up had handle bars I couldn't reach and a sissy bar that was at least 2' higher than his head and he was more than 6' tall when he was 12. 

I rode that bike to school every day. Good memories.

Frosty The Lucky.

[Irondragon Forge ClayWorks]

Anyone remember building a bike for jumping ramps. Mine never had brakes and to stop I would jam my foot between the front forks and tire. It took my mom a while to figure out why my right shoe would have a groove worn into the sole.

I can't control the wind, all I can do is adjust my sail’s.
Semper Paratus

 

[Jason L]

We never had any extra bikes to piece together one. We lived far enough from town I only got to go two or three times a month. We lived in a little town but we rode for miles every day. My friends lived a couple miles away and we would meet in their neighborhood because they had speed bumps! Like built in ramps. We might wander down to the train tracks and see who could ride the furthest on a rail, so how far we could ride down the center without falling over or knocking the tire out of alignment, or sometimes grab a slow moving train and ride it to the next crossing. If we were lucky the train would be stopped and the engineer would give us all little bottles of juice if we asked him. Thinking back, I don't know how we survived childhood. We did some really stupid things and we didn't wear helmets!

[Frosty]

I didn't have extra bikes, I had a job. We stopped getting an allowance when we got old enough to work in Dad's shop, started out sweeping and oiling, progressed to carrying parts from one station to the next. Square shear to circle shear to punch press to spinning lathe to the next lathe or to packaging to leave the shop. I got paid by the piece and learned to work fast and not damage parts. 

My little sister was too scared of the machinery and stayed out of the shop. 

We lived in the suburbs as far back as I can remember and I clearly remember the house and porch when I was three. I still dislike the color Paris Green. 

Anyway, I bought all the bikes I owned including my "stingray." My first 10 speed wasn't fancy but 10 speeds weren't supposed to be, they were transportation. By then bikes were sort of anti-establishment so bling was a bad thing. Other than long hair the only "Hippy" to my life was taking advantage of the free sex part part, I was never into the "Happy(?) Poor people thing. It was too easy to make a living if you had marketable skills. My parents were depression era kids so we learned marketable skills and their philosophy. There was nothing happy about being poor and I agreed.

My first car was a 59 Dodge and within 2 years I bought a 62 Vette, used but nice. Dad and I had a long commute, we worked for the same company but different parts, he in the spinning shop I worked in the rubber plant and of course we rode together and needed "economical" cars. He had a 58 vette, not fancy but nice. They were economical compared to driving the pickup. 

As an adult I rode a bike because it was the fastest way to get through city traffic and economic until Alaskan weather or winters put it away for something with a heater.

I grew up in the burbs but we spend all the time we could in the field, camping fishing, rock hunting, traveling. It was a great way to grow up.

Frosty The Lucky.

 

[BillyBones]

I did not have a "job" back then but i did do things like mow grass, weed gardens, shovel snow, rake leaves, whet ever.

My dad actually bought my first car for me, that Nova, when i was 13. I still think it was becuase he wanted it. My dad back in the late 60's and through the 70's drag raced. Most of the cars him and his friends had they built. It had been about 5 years since he had built a car so i think that is why he actually bought it. 1983, that was the year i became a professional mechanic. The first time i had ever been paid to work on a car. My dad's freind let me put brakes on his car.  My dad of course supervised and made sure i did it right but i did all the work and got paid... so i could put that money into "my" car. We tore that car down, did the body work, had a bit of rust here and there. We built the engine, somewhere around 4 maybe 450HP, locker rear diff, then jacked it up in the front, a bit in the back, set of Hookers with cherry bombs and nothing after. As a teenager i ran a 13 flat in the 1/4 my best, my dad never drove it but i am sure he could have gotten into the 12's. Anyway when i turned 16 my dad gave me 3 boxes. 1 had a Pioneer radio with cassette player and 2 6x9"s, another had the keys to the car, and the third was full of receipts. He said that is how much you owe me for the money "we" put into your car.  So i got my first real job and paid him what i could. As i have become older i do not think it was so much that i paid him back but that i went to work and learned what responsibility is. 

My dad and i still work on cars together. He turned 74 this year but still gets under the hood. Right now we have a '72 Monte, it is in a shop for paint over the winter though. I will have to post pics when we get it back from paint.  We do not build drag cars anymore just mostly clean them up and dress them up. Then find something else someone is willing to trade us for, or sell this one and find another project. 

[Jason L]

Back in the 70's I was still in the single digits so the only "job" I had was working on my grandfathers farm. He would give me a broom handle and I would poke holes in the ground, drop whatever seeds he was planting and cover it up. Come harvest time he would give me a bucket and I would pick beans and peas. He had several acres to plant so it took a while. When I got a little older he would take me to his produce stand and I would load cars and crack pecans with his four crackers. My dad worked for the power company so I wasn't involved in that. We had about 3 kids in my neighborhood that were in my age group, one was slightly older. I think only one of them had a bicycle so we mostly roamed around in the woods. My first car was a '74 Volkswagon and I drove that thing like I stole it. My friends called it the big yellow turd. It spent a lot of time on dirt roads doing donuts and drifting on wet pavement. We'd take it to the drive in movie and pack kids in the trunk, on the running boards and everywhere else to get them in since they charged by the carload. It was like a clown car. Once we got in it would erupt with kids. Boy times have changed

[Tim695]

On 11/9/2023 at 8:11 PM, Jason L said:

I've never had problems with the heat before but in the south it's always a possibility. I also keep subtitles on, it seems there are certain frequencies that I have trouble hearing and they make the music so loud and the voices so low that I simply can't understand what they are saying.

After careful consideration, I've decided the best thing for me to do is not play with the dog while I'm forging. I never had a problem till I threw that tennis ball so that must be it. I'll just have to concentrate on forging more and throwing tennis balls to the dog less. It breaks my heart but I have to do the responsible thing. I've got to have priorities. 

Get one of those long handle gall scoops so you don't have to bend down. As I get older i find that I have to work smarter not harder. It used to be easy to draw out a set of reins, now i find the press makes short work of them and all I have to do is clean them up. I find that I also have trouble with the heat. I now work in the forge for an hour, take a 30 minute break to sit down and hydrate, then go back to the forge. things take longer but at least I can still get them done.

[Jason L]

I know what you mean Tim. My wife actually bought one of those ball scoops but I'm not skilled enough with it to reach the ball before the dog grabs it and runs away with it lol. I have to act like I'm walking past then dive for it. She's a high octane dog. But I did solve the problem. I keep a ball in my pocket and I throw a different one. When she catches the first one I let her play with it till she loses interest then I throw the one in my pocket. She chases it and I retrieve the other ball while she's occupied. So far it works pretty good. Wish I'd thought of it sooner.

[Tim695]

Smart man!

[Frosty]

Ah, dogs that need you to keep several balls in the air. Reminds me of Trooper a "cockeyed Spaniel", definitely not a Cocker like the shelter claimed but something similar. Anyway, he was a great dog and a fetching fool. He'd "hint" by bumping you in the shin with a ball and if you didn't throw it he'd walk in front of you and stop. He had a terrier's persistence. 

Anyway, we visited Will Roger's park in S. Cal. and being as everybody's dog ran free, we brought Trooper. I was throwing a ball and he was becoming more of a pest than usual, actually tripped me more than once. Soooooo, after walking up one of the many rolling hills in the park I threw Trooper's ball. The "hill" is a pretty normal terrain feature of the area. Maybe 200'+ higher than the "main" level, actually more of a series or ridges than hill. Well, Trooper roared down that grade like he was shot out of a cannon, barking in Glee.  It's easy to throw a ball more than 1/4 mile off that hill and trooper ran flat out the whole way, catching joyous air off humps. It was just THE BEST ball chase he ever had. He ran back with the ball and danced waiting for the next throw. Lots of people were throwing balls down the hill for their dogs, it was an advertised feature of the park.

He returned at a much more sedate pace the second time and wouldn't give me the saliva saturated and dripping ball, even growled an exhausted Heck NO. He trod along with us and laid down every time we stopped for the rest of the day and racked out in the back seat when we left. 

Will Rogers park is a great place to visit, lots of history but the ball hill is THE BEST way to run a little energy off your dog.

Good memories. 

Frosty The Lucky.

[Jason L]

That does sound like a great place to wear out a high octane dog. Our dog is small and fast. She can usually catch up to the ball before it bounces more than once. Thus far I haven't been able to dampen her enthusiasm for the chase. I always wear out first. I'm sure she would die of a heart attack before she let up. She has a terminal case of energy that I can't compete with. We've taken walks with her that went on for hours and she never gave up on pulling us forward unless something grabbed her attention. Being a terrier, she's made of muscle and determination with no quit whatsoever. She also likes to sit in my lap and probe for tender spots with her bony little paws and elbows. She loves to find a particularly vulnerable area and concentrate her assaults on that one spot. But we wouldn't take anything for her, she's our baby. 

[Frosty]

If you have a little room say 3x as far as you can throw a tennis ball make a spud gun ball launcher. A couple drops of lighter fluid, swing it back and forth, drop the ball in and pull the trigger. BANG, away ball! The piezoelectric grill igniters work a treat for firing spud guns.

I'll bet the look on his face will be Kodak time when as he runs back with a ball you shoot another one. 

The real upside to playing fetch using a spud gun ball launcher comes if a mean big dog chases yours back. Shooting him/er with a tennis ball won't injure him/er but it'll certainly put the chase out of mind. Like throwing a switch. 

A tennis racket won't have nice officers asking you questions and I know from personal experience it only takes one sharp rap with a tennis racket to change a large mean dog's mind.

Frosty The Lucky.