[geeks] holy shit, snow

[Phil Stracchino]

On Fri, Feb 20, 2004 at 04:40:06AM +0000, wa2egp at att.net wrote:
> That's my point, driving sanely.  Unfortunately, most SUV drivers in this area
> seem to use their vehicle to correct some testosterone deficiency rather than
> traverse bad roads.  I still remember the time I was waiting behind a Suburban
> for a light change on an icy road.  We got the green and the Suburban just 
> spun its wheels.  I went around it easily, did the Neon commercial "Beep, beep,
> ....Hi!" routine and continued on to work.  I still can't understand how that
> driver couldn't move.  Ok, there was about a 5 degree slope away from the light
> but really.......


I used to live in Spokane, and every winter the place would be full of
wanna-be cowboys who'd lived all their lives in eastern Washington,
north Idaho or western Montana, and still didn't know how to drive on an
icy road.  They thought, "Hey, I have four-wheel drive, I can go
anywhere," but it never occurred to them that they couldn't brake or
stop any better than anyone else, and had really very little more
traction than anyone else.

At that time I was driving a heavily-worked-on 1970 SS350 Camaro.  It
was a beast of a car to drive in winter even with an automatic
transmission; the engine made so much power that on an icy road, even
with your foot totally off the gas, you couldn't apply enough braking to
the rear wheels to overcome the idle torque of the engine without
locking up the front wheels unless you manually shifted into neutral
when braking.  But I drove that car through many Spokane winters while
the road verges were littered with imbeciles in foah-bah-foahs who'd
never learned that tromping on the gas pedal with their shit-kicker
cowboy boots is NOT the answer to every problem.


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