January 24, 2010
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Reno or bust
In Reno at Circus Circus hotel to give a marketing presentation to ACTR A.org’s board of directors in the morning on how to monetize their website. These are some really great people and I love working with them. Took 12 hours to get here due to weather, a horrible accident (not me, someone else), and a fiasco with snow chains! Left at 10a.m., got in at 10:15p.m.
The accident on the I-80 closed down the highway. After sitting in traffic for 2.5 hours we were all allowed to pass through, but the car in front of me didn’t move. The car stayed still, lights off, and people were honking and being very rude. It started snowing pretty hard and wind got to blowing (I-80 in January on Donner’s Pass can be a bummer, and we all know what happened to the Donners). I got out of my car and walked up to the passenger side of the car and saw a stressed out woman on a cell phone with a big friendly lab in the car with her. Turns out she had forgotten to turn off her headlights during the 2.5 hours we sat there and her battery was dead. I told her not to worry and that I’d park behind her (we were in the right lane on the highway…no shoulder available) with my hazards flashing so people would go around and stop driving up behind her and being very rude…not to mention the danger of people coming up on an unlighted vehicle in a pitch black snowstorm. She got out briefly to thank me and then started looking for jumper cables in the back of her SUV, but had none. Neither did I (DOH!). I told her it was safer for us each to get back into our vehicles and wait for help to show up. Eventually I saw a CalTrans truck coming our way, I got out and flagged it down (with my bright new shiny MagLight I got for Christmas!). Shortly after the CHP arrived. She was soon on her way. That was another hour later, but I just could not leave her sitting there on the road by herself.
No good deed goes unpunished. After we got going, the weather turned even worse. My SAAB (I LOVE that car) told me the temp outside was 23 degrees. I got stuck behind some semi trucks and they kicked up a lot of mud and snow onto my car. Clearing my windshield was getting difficult, so I hit my wipers and my washer fluid…BIG MISTAKE. Never use wiper fluid in ice cold weather. It leaves a white frozen film behind. I managed to get off the road (dark and it has no line markers on it at all) and clean my windshield off, but I had to actually lean over to the passenger side of my car to see out. That worked because the passenger side wiper fluid nozzles had frozen up and no fluid got on to that side of the windshield.
Then they made us put on chains. I paid a guy 30 bucks to do it and was on my way. After 40 miles we were allowed to take the chains off. I figured I could do that myself. I figured wrong.. I got the passenger side front wheel chains off no problem, but the driver’s side I slipped up and the chains got wrapped around my axle and into my wheel well. I sat in the shoulder of the road and tried to pry it out for about 20 minutes before my back told me it was done. Fortunately a guy pulled up and got it out for me. I gave him 20 bucks. AAA would have cost a lot more.
UPDATE: Just got back. It went really well! And I got home in 5 hours.
