Scraping your ice (Or why not to follow close)

[repsac]

It's not so much a sighting as just really hilarious.


Back years ago I lived in Toccoa Georgia. Now while not in the mountains, it's close enough to get snow and mind numbingly cold weather every now and again. At the time, I was a student at Piedmont College located in Demorest. That's about a fourty five minute drive on a good day, hour or more on a bad.

I remember this one really cold day where it had started to sleet/snow on me as I was going to school. Since I was a little over half way there, I figured I'd keep going and call mum when I got in. More than likely I'd camp out in the student center or something for the day and head home when it warmed enough. (I suspected class would be canceled.) So here I was driving in this weather when I see this truck for a local chicken company. Sneaking up behind the guy (Not tailgaiting, just close enough so the sleet wasn't hitting me as bad) I relax for the ride in.

Was I being sucky? Probably. Given my age at the time, probably. I wasn't tailgating remember, but yeah, I was close. Daredevil teenager and whatnot.

As we're motoring along, something hilarious happens.

The truck in front of me hit this HUGE puddle of water that was on the road. That water came up and hit my windshield in this nasty brown sheet that freaked me out. Slowing down I turned on my wipers...only to find that the water had frozen solid to the windshield of the truck.

Pulling into a church parking lot, it took me another twenty minutes of scraping, cursing, freezing, and more scraping to get the ice off the window. I swear the stuff had frozen to almost an inch thick sheet!

I learned my lesson after that. Don't follow too closely.

[crazylegs]

So the weather was warm enough to have a puddle of liquid water on the road, but cold enough so that it froze in contact with your windscreen? To an inch thick? Blimey.

[repsac]

It's hard to explain. The snow/sleet was really wet, and it had piled up on the road. you know when it really first starts snowing before the stuff sticks? That's about how it was. The roads were still pretty slick, but wet in places.

[Megg]

I know exactly what you mean, and experienced it firsthand. Picture this: I got my license only about four years ago, and until this trip, I had never really driven more than an hour each way. We were living in Idaho, and sick to death of it, so we decided to move home to California. In February. Without movers. Yeah.

So here we are, hubby is driving the 23 footer, I am driving the 17 foot truck. We hit Salt Lake City, and there is a huge storm. I have no idea where I am going, so I am following hubby. It got to the point where I was desperately trying to keep his tail lights in view, as I could see nothing. I was obviously following a little close, and he threw up a mixture of snow, ice, and salt that froze solid on my window. We had to pull over so I could scrape it off and clean my wipers. It was not fun, I shook after that for a while.

Driving 14 hours in a crappy UHaul with a 17 year old and a 5 year old is not for the faint of heart, I assure you.