Yesterday did not go as planned. Broken bolt, and a missing exhaust gasket caused a halt in my projects. Today I’m headed out to find a bolt. Funny that a Grade 8.8 would snap like that.
It figures that the weather would not hold. I guess I’ll be chilly in the garage finishing up. I still need to get the transmission pan on, cross member in, exhaust re-hung, transfer case fluid swapped, transmission fluid topped off, and road tested.
I was up in Oklahoma City on Sunday. My friend Grant was trying out for the Oklahoma City Energy. I told him I’d come up and watch him play. He is a good soccer player and I believe he had a legitimate chance to make the final two squads from which 3 or 4 players would be invited to the team. Over 200 hundred young and some not so young men were suited up that weekend.
It was a ridiculously windy weekend with steady winds of 25 and gusts of 35 mph and higher. Simply put a very windy day. How they played soccer in that wind was beyond me.
After the matches were over I decided to take the “back way” home. South Oklahoma City is laid out in section lines, one mile sections. When I was a kid and worked in South Oklahoma City at the Braum’s at 89th and Pennsylvania I would drive the section lines to and from the store. After you drive the highway a few hundred times you get kinda tired of the same old route.
Meridian Avenue used to be the main north and south route before Highway 62 was built. It had businesses and even a road house near the river bridge. Today the Southlake Soccer Complex is there and a few trucking businesses still call the area home. Farms and the airport complex are west of Meridian.
I got in the Range Rover and as I pulled up to Meridian a Nash Metropolitan rolled by. I looked it up and it appeared to be a Series IV. I don’t see Nash Metropolitan’s very often. In my parent’s neighborhood growing up a neighbor on the next block had TWO of these sitting in the backyard of their home. I got in behind him and followed him. I over took him on 134th street and snapped the picture. He wasn’t in a hurry. He was having a true “Sunday drive”. He looked like he was enjoying it.
Winter has broken on the southern plains. I hope to see more and more classics as the weather warms up and people take to the roads.
We have had what passes for winter weather in Oklahoma the past week. This is a picture of my drive through Oklahoma City’s Crown Heights neighborhood on the way to VZDs for lunch on Tuesday. You can see what’s left of a light snow from a few days before.
This morning I woke up to 9ºF, light winds (thank God), and very dry snow falling. I snapped a picture and took a short video that wasn’t worth the trouble of setting it up. 9ºF is so cold that the little ceramic heater I have set up in the Range Rover can’t keep the snow off the windows. It’s probably time to upgrade the little bugger next year. I like to get into a warm car in the morning and I don’t like scraping ice.
When I got home last night I was greeted by Sophie and my son’s dog Bo. He had managed to get one of their blankets stuck on his head and he was dragging it behind him like a cape. I wonder how long he’d been doing that. In this picture you can see Sophie greeting me with what can only be described as a “wailing cry, punctuated with slight growls”. She is talking to us. I imagine she is telling us how happy she is that we are home and how much she missed us and about all the people and dogs that passed behind the house during day. It goes on for 5 minutes or more. The more you talk to her, the more she goes on. She usually stops when I give her a “final pat” on the back and tell her “that’s enough”.
I have to confess, I quit paying attention to the weather forecasters on Sunday of this week. I have to mention that they refrained from telling us that we were all going to die. They have actually said that in the recent past. Our news channels are all trying to sell commercial time for cars and furniture and will say just about anything to get you to turn in to the next broadcast. You’ve read my Snowpoxyclipses posts 2009’s Snowpocalypse, and 2011’s Snowpocalypse 2: Electric Boogaloo so you know what they are capable. We are all lucky to still be alive after those weather events. wink, wink
You have to have some serious stones to tell your viewers there is a 50-50 chance of something happening. You might die, or maybe not.
The Big White Bus performed excellently today. I saw several lesser vehicles spinning their wheels and several less sure drivers putting along on the interstate. I try not to be annoying and I give a wide berth when I drive in this type of mess. It just proves the point that when you are picking out tires PRICE is the LAST THING you should be concerned about. Performance is far more important. My current set of Firestone’s have the Revo 2 rubber in them and I’m pretty sure Spiderman is jealous of the grip these tires provide.
What a great bit of advertising. I love the dog not moving when called with that, “I’m not getting back in the truck” defiance and little girl at the end trudging on behind her mum. Where do I get a #Hibernot bumper sticker? I’m all in.
#Hibernot is about embracing the British winter, about enjoying winter in all its glory.
Explore what other people have been getting up to, tell us what #Hibernot means to you and search #Hibernot trails in your local area.
Doesn’t that make you want to go out in the 30 mile per hour winds with 48 mph gusts and experience the -10 F wind chill of the southern plains circa January 26th? Well no. But it does make me want to take my Land Rover somewhere remote and get out and enjoy, if only for an hour, the crisp clean air of winter and the sting of winter cold. The sting that reminds you of February, 1987 the winter that you stood in knee deep water running barbed wire for Dr. Kammerlocher. The sting that reminds you of the weekends you stood on the back of a M110 howitzer in freezing rain while serving your country in the United States Marine Corps Reserve. The sting that reminds you of camping with your friends (just for the fun of it) in period clothing from the 1750’s on the the Javine Farm near Barnsdall, Oklahoma when it dipped to 12 F overnight. The sting that reminds you of the cold air and snow down on the river below the dam at Bull Shoals Lake, Arkansas when you took Mrs. Okierover on her first camping trip in 2013. Simply, hell yes.
Hibernot means not shunning exposure the elements, but embracing them. You would not know winter if you did not have summer. If sweat had never run down your brow while you were standing in the 120 F heat of the high desert of 29 Palms, you could never appreciate the winter blizzards on the southern plains.
We will never be as “hard” as we thought we once were back in our youth. We will never be as foolhardy again either. So get out and enjoy the winter. Get out and let the snow or cold rain fall on you with a “devil may care” (Idiom) attitude. Then get in your Land Rover, turn on the heater, and if they still work your heated seats, and drive to a coffee house or diner and get a warm drink, then drive home remembering the good old days.
We were blessed again last night with yet another ice storm. An inch of ice was predicted, I think we got 3/4 of an inch here in Norman. The bands of temp changes from freezing to thawing affected the ice in an interesting way by freezing then thawing again giving the ice a shattered look. The sides of the tires look like china plates.
These little storms are exactly why I wired the Range Rover with an extension cord. This is so I can have a portable ceramic heater blowing all winter. I plug it in and only the worst Icepoxyclips and Snowmagedons have me scraping. So last night all the freezing rain just ran down the sides leaving the windows clear and the inside toasty warm.
All that water has to freeze somewhere so the icicles look great.
This is the Chevy Sonic. As you can tell there was not heater inside.
This wasn’t even nearly as bad as some I’ve seen in the past. We had 3 inches of ice just a few years ago. We couldn’t get into the kids cars for 2 days. We are told there is a slight chance of snow later tonight. I’m not holding my breath for it. What you also learn on the southern plains is weathermen are on TV to sell advertising, not tell you the truth about the weather.
Stay warm, thanks for reading, bring your ice scraper, and Happy Rovering.
When the rare winter storm hits the central plains besides electricity there is nothing I’d rather have than a Land Rover. Never been stuck (knock on wood).
Here in another week or two, we’ll be wishing for cooler weather.
