A Blog About Land Rovers and Living in Oklahoma
If you missed Part 1, jump over to that post and catch up (the link is after the break). Or don’t, this is still a free country, more or less, depending on who you ask. What follows is Day 2 of the Great Southwest Oklahoma Expedition! See there, this trip just got more awesome the more we drove!
Continue reading “Southwest Oklahoma Expedition – January 2021 Part 2 (Post #591) 2/2/2021”
I know this is a Land Rover site, and if you only tune in read about my exploits in my Land Rover, I understand if you don’t go any further…but I went out in my F150.
Continue reading “Southwest Oklahoma Expedition – January 2021 Part 1 (Post #590) 2/1/2021”Ever wonder why certain places on the highway? I know I do. My friend Dave showed us a place on the 405 in Los Angeles where the traffic just slows down or stops. Traffic engineers have studied it and can’t sort out why.
I-35 in south Oklahoma City has its spots too. But there are NO mysteries. It’s easy to see why the pile ups happen where they do. The N. 12th street on-ramp was once such spot. Before it was corrected the on-ramp was south of an off-ramp on the other side of the highway to Shields Blvd.
You can see it here in its current CORRECTED state.
The on-ramp to I-35 (red) was moved north of the off-ramp (blue). This stopped people from entering the highway and trying to cross three lanes to just immediately exit on the Shields off-ramp. Instead of just driving a mile north on city streets and then on to Shields the inconsiderate drivers caused several traffic jams for decades. Including the first time I was hit in my Range Rover. I was rear ended due to the traffic jam caused by this situation.
The state finally studied the highway there and moved the on-ramp so that drivers could not cause the problem. It was a long time coming. But today the slow down there is due to traffic two miles up at I-240.
There are a few other on ramps between Norman and Oklahoma City that were designed back in the 1960’s and were never intended to carry the amount of traffic they do today. Traffic backs up there every day.
I came up on another on-ramp that was not corrected when they widened I-35 ten years ago. The traffic piles up after the S.E. 15th Street on-ramp. INCONSIDERATE drivers enter I-35 and then attempt to cross four lanes of traffic to exit on to I-40 west bound.
You can see it here.
The pile up happens once traffic reaches critical mass just after 7:30am. I-35 and I-40 are called “The Crossroads of America”. I-40 is coast to coast and I-35 is Canada to Texas. This intersection needs a multi-million dollar over haul. The confluence also has a rail spur and a river to add to the fun of correcting the horrible traffic in this area.
I got to enjoy a lovely hour-long traffic jam the other morning. It was the perfect storm.
The road is poorly designed. Nearly anything can cause an issue. Any driver that doesn’t have good driving skills or as I often imagine doesn’t have the confidence they should to drive in the rush hour traffic.
Only God knows why Oklahoman’s can’t drive when it rains. They can’t drive when it snows either. I believe it is a confidence issue. That and most Oklahoma students do not understand enough Physics to know what their cars and tires can and cannot do.
An lastly an inconsiderate driver, who just pulls out on to the highway. Slows down and starts meandering their way to the far left lane on less than a mile of very congested roads. Add in a little testosterone and a kid who thinks they would make a good addition to the TV show Street Outlaws and you have a recipe for disaster.
You can see every lane is jammed. When I got up to the actual place the accident occurred two OKC fire engines has been dispatched and an ambulance.
I was only delayed 25 minutes. But the highway at one point was backed up all the way into north Moore causing more than an hour delay for many thousands of drivers.
You can see the pickup had obviously spun and hit the center wall. At least two other cars were also impacted. I don’t know who the ambulance was for, none of the cars were damaged enough to look like someone needed to be taken away by ambulance.
Unfortunately for me if they started TODAY this intersection, it would be completed just a few years before I am eligible to retire.
So what’s the take-away. Be a considerate driver. Find routes that don’t cause others to back up or cause them to stop while you futz your way across four lanes. It’s just bad manners.
Be safe out there, thanks for reading, take a driving course, and Happy Rovering.
With my new job providing a minor amount disposable income once again, I was able to do a small landscaping project this weekend. I took Mr. Fisher with me on Saturday to Lowe’s to pick up some pavers, gravel, and a flower requested by Mrs. Okierover.
We got to Lowe’s and loaded up two push carts. I got it all paid for and then we took it out to load. Mr. Fisher thought that if we loaded it all in the back that the front tires might not be touching the ground when we were done. I didn’t think it would be quite that bad, but why risk it.
So we loaded it all up. We put the gravel in the floor board between the seats. We put all the pavers in the back. My before and after pics of the load change on the springs don’t really show the inch it dropped. As I said to Mr. Fisher, Bill Burke said this is a 3/4 ton truck so we should be good.
I have medium duty springs and once you add a few hundred pounds the BWB really rides nice. We got home and we both shared stories about over loading pickup trucks we owned back in the day. His a Chevy S-10 with way too much gravel in the bed and my Ford Ranger with way too much lumber loaded in her. In both cases driving home at a crawl because every bump caused the front tires to leave the ground. Stupid is as stupid does.
We got the BWB home and began the project. The first task was to clear the material from the area. With this I uncovered one of the biggest “wolf spiders” I’ve ever seen. The website says up to 1.38 inches in body size. We were all of that if not more. That is a standard size spade shovel.
A storm front was bearing down on us and we worked quickly to get the rock down and the border. I decided the western most portion of the bed had to be tiered. The water is carrying off the dirt at a high rate.
I didn’t take the recommended before picture but you can see the after…
Another great use of a luxury SUV. I often see Jeff Aronson load up his Series II with firewood and people with dirty boots. You have all seen the pictures of Land Rovers “working”. Just because I have carpet and leather does that make it any less of a workhorse? Who knows.
To me my Range Rover is a “truck”. I’ve said this many times,
“I’ve never owned a car I was afraid to drive through a barbed wire fence.”
I mean that. Scratches, eh, dents, eh, what ever, it ain’t a beauty contest. Well it’s not with me anyway.
Thanks for reading and Happy Rovering.
Florida Orange Juice Growers Association had a slogan in the 1970’s, “Orange juice, it’s not just for breakfast anymore.” It was used to encourage people to drink orange juice during the day, not just at breakfast time. It’s clever and a lesson for us. Diagnosing a problem should not stop with only one solution, keep diagnosing through the problem.
Diagnostics is the root of what we do to fix our Land Rovers. If you can’t diagnose the problem you can’t fix it. This was made painfully financially clear to me last night. Continue reading “Diagnostics, Not Just for Breakfast Anymore (Post #490) 4/24/2014”
Seriously?!?
I guarantee someone while loading this said, “It’ll be alright.”
Every time he made a minor adjustment in steering the entire truck tipped to the right. We were going between 65-70 mph. When we had to brake your could hear the tires making the rubbing sounds and the grown of tires about to fail.
If he’d had a blow out or had to turn suddenly he’d killed dozens of people. If you haven’t looked closer the truck is full of boulders the size of desks.
He had no tag and I did not know the color of the rig so calling the Highway Patrol *55 was fruitless. I passed him as soon as it was possible, on a straight away.
Stay safe! Thanks for reading, and Happy boulder-free impact Rovering.