That crazy U&L

[Dinsdale]

This has been about the most messed up year for weather I can remember. Ranks as one of the coldest ever, and we broke about every record for spring rainfall there is.

And now... a couple of days before Halloween, they're opening the ski resorts. They're usually pretty stoked if they can get them open by Thanksgiving. They've got about 4 feet up there, but things might warm up quite a bit over the next few days.


Hell, I drove in heavy snow coming up over Siskiyou Summit (Interstate 5) coming up from California last weekend (never mind the nasty hailstorm in the Sierra that kinda sent the car I was driving off the road in the middle of nowhere... RACK Toyota's engineering that kept us from dying... that, and the big fuggin redwood that bounced us back up from over the ravine and back onto the road... pretty dramatic shit).

[Mikey]

What, no pics?

This would be great PET material.

[Dinsdale]

Camera took a dump at the onset of the trip.

Not like I was going to furiously snap pics while the car went over a cliff in the middle of the night anyway.

The drive back from NoCal with missing windows in a snowstorm was really pleasant, let me tell ya.


But damn... drove through the Eatsern Oregon and NoCal/Northern Nevada high deserts on the way there (Las Vegas). In SE Oregon, as night fell, I was running an obstacle course through thousands of jackrabbits. We got plenty of regular-old rabbits around these parts -- but damn, they grow some humongous jackrabbits out there -- like fucking huge -- like beagle-sized jackrabbits. And they don't seem to have the good sense to stay in the sagebrush and not jump out in the road when a car comes by (about once an hour in that desolate hellhole).


Barely-missed literally hundreds of jackrabbits (had the car just about sliding back and forth through one particularly tough stretch of rabbits) in SE Oregon. Missed a big deer by inches in california. I think I actually grazed a bigazz coyote, in Nevada, I think. And I think that must have been a giant possum that met his match with my front wheels in the Sierra. And goodness knows how many rattlesnakes I got between all those places (there's places in Eastern Oregon and Nevada where there's more rattlesnakes than ground). It was like a weird safari at 80MPH.


Pretty low death toll for both the humans and animals, all things considered.


But I've never seen a road where it's raining on one side of a curve, and there's several inches of hail piled up on the (blind) other side of the curve. Airdam on the front of the car hit the "wall" of piled-up hail, and it was game over. Thank goodness for the tree (they have a couple of those around that part of the world). We took a tremendous hit, but I'll be damned if we didn't bounce back up to road-level after hitting a couple -- infinitely preferable to going down a huge ravine in the middle of nowhere with no one around.

Not much left of the car -- but I drove it another 500 miles home.

[Mikey]

Next time you make a road trip you really should have a trailing vehicle taking HD video. You could sell this kind of shit to some cable network and prolly pay for the entire trip, including damages to your ride, and have a little $$ left over for booze and smoking material.

[PSUFAN]

Discovery Channel needs to initiate talks with Dins, stat. I know I'd watch.

[Dinsdale]

I really don't ever intend to lead the life of high adventure.

It just comes naturally... I'm "That Guy."

Although I guess I put myself in plenty of situations that are conducive to tales of daring-do.

Didn't have a camera recording the rather large chinook I broke off the line a couple of days ago, either. Maybe I should wear a retard-helmet with a video camera attached to it and film at all times. I'd hurt my melon less, and you guys would be thoroughly entertained.

[Truman]

l to r: Dinsdale; Substandard U&L Mexican Import

[Trampis]

Camera took a dump at the onset of the trip.

Not like I was going to furiously snap pics while the car went over a cliff in the middle of the night anyway.

The drive back from NoCal with missing windows in a snowstorm was really pleasant, let me tell ya.


But damn... drove through the Eatsern Oregon and NoCal/Northern Nevada high deserts on the way there (Las Vegas). In SE Oregon, as night fell, I was running an obstacle course through thousands of jackrabbits. We got plenty of regular-old rabbits around these parts -- but damn, they grow some humongous jackrabbits out there -- like fucking huge -- like beagle-sized jackrabbits. And they don't seem to have the good sense to stay in the sagebrush and not jump out in the road when a car comes by (about once an hour in that desolate hellhole).


Barely-missed literally hundreds of jackrabbits (had the car just about sliding back and forth through one particularly tough stretch of rabbits) in SE Oregon. Missed a big deer by inches in california. I think I actually grazed a bigazz coyote, in Nevada, I think. And I think that must have been a giant possum that met his match with my front wheels in the Sierra. And goodness knows how many rattlesnakes I got between all those places (there's places in Eastern Oregon and Nevada where there's more rattlesnakes than ground). It was like a weird safari at 80MPH.


Pretty low death toll for both the humans and animals, all things considered.


But I've never seen a road where it's raining on one side of a curve, and there's several inches of hail piled up on the (blind) other side of the curve. Airdam on the front of the car hit the "wall" of piled-up hail, and it was game over. Thank goodness for the tree (they have a couple of those around that part of the world). We took a tremendous hit, but I'll be damned if we didn't bounce back up to road-level after hitting a couple -- infinitely preferable to going down a huge ravine in the middle of nowhere with no one around.

Not much left of the car -- but I drove it another 500 miles home.

So you got hitched in tahoe? Is that we're gathering here? What do they call it? Eloped? Congrats