Pucker Factor
 

Approaching Flagstaff this morn from the north east. Temp 24 degrees. White out conditions, visibility 1/2 mile in blowing snow. All of a sudden the back end of the pick up wants to lead. Hit the 4WD button and all was good. The side of the road was littered with cars in the ditch. Much better than my old 4WD where I had to get out and lock the hubs. Rear wheel drive with no weight in the back is about the worse combination for sand or snow.:CRY:

Pick up..... Pick up.....

What no Cobra?

Glad you are not in a ditch someplace.

Mike

You just put me in mind of one of my many New York to California drives. During one trip in March of 1980, I was driving west on I-40 (before it was completed), through New Mexico at night in my '79 Toyota Corolla. It had been raining and the road was wet or so I thought and the road had shiny appearance. I was in my early twenties and was still too bull headed too admit I needed glasses to drive so I couldn't tell what I was really driving on (maybe that was a blessing in disguise).

Well, by the time the sun started to come up, I was already in eastern Arizona, only to find out that what I was driving on all night was not a wet road, but ice, some very slick ice at that. For miles I saw vehicles, mostly tractor-trailers strewn in the median, some overturned. That definitely made for some white knuckled driving.

Suddenly, I came up on some stopped traffic. We were there for the better part of 30 minutes. When traffic started to move again, I put her in gear in let up on the clutch. My all-weather tires were turning, but I wasn't moving, except maybe the rear end which wanted to go to the right so I cut my wheel all the way to the right and let the car wander to the shoulder, which strangely enough had no ice on it at all. Anyway, I drove for what seemed the next few hours with two tires on the shoulder on the other two on the ice. Two weeks later, headed east, I saw no signs that anything like that had ever happened.

That was an interesting trip, to say the least. I never ever did experience anything quite like that again.