Steppin' It Up A Notch

Hello! Welcome to my blog, this is cool. I tried to get "Step it up a notch" but it was already taken. For those who don't know, the phrase "Step it up a notch" has become my trademark phrase and only after 2 days. I'll tell the story some other time.

I have been relatively out of touch with the rest of the world since last Saturday, but this past week has been so much fun. Sat. Jan 12, I left Calgary (for Colorado Springs) at about 9 AM with Jason. The drive was relatively uneventful. One thing we saw that I thought was strange but cool was a wind farm. On one side of the road, the turbines were turning clockwise but on the other side of the road, the turbines were turning counter-clockwise. We stopped overnight in Buffalo, WY and the nice lady at the Super 8 motel gave us a discount for apparently no reason. Thank you Jesus! The next day we continued driving and arrived in Colorado Springs at about 3:30 PM where we met a bunch of really cool people.

The next 5 days were spent learning with and getting to know them. It is so cool how the commonality of being followers of Jesus Christ brings us so close so quickly. It was sad to have to part ways but I am so looking forward to seeing them again either sometime in this lifetime or in Heaven.

The drive back to Calgary was much more eventful. We decided to take a detour to see Mount Rushmore in South Dakota. On the way, it was so windy that when we stopped at Chugwater, WY for gas, the wind just about took the passenger door off my car, well not quite but you get the idea; it was probably gusting to at least 100 kph (60 mph). Approaching Mt. Rushmore, it looked foggy but I knew that God would bless us with a clear view when we got there and He did, yay praise Jesus! Afterwards, the drive got quite a bit more interesting. We drove the I-90 back to Wyoming from Rapid City, SD. What was cool about this part was that my radio picked up a Christian radio station from Rapid City even though we were 100 miles away and my radio often can't even pick up stations less than 10 miles away because I broke the antenna back in December while transporting a mattress on the top of my car. It was snowing by then but nothing major by Canadian standards. At first, we were thinking of driving straight through the night but after some difficult driving, we decided against it. Now it's time to apply some culture training! After having arrived back in Alberta, I figured out why it was more difficult driving in the US even though I have driven in much worse weather conditions here. Here are some differences between driving in Canada (Alberta at least) and the US:

1. we noticed that at night, the interstates (main highway) are much less frequently used than the main highways in Alberta. For example, if you were to stand on the I-90 at 10PM you would probably have an average of one car passing every 2 minutes; if you stood on Hwy 2 at 10PM you would average one car every 30 secs or less. Less traffic = more snow accumulating on the road.

2a. on the side of the highway there are those reflective posts. In the US they are flat reflective diamonds on the top of the post, in Alberta they are completely cylindrical with the reflective tape wrapped around the top of the cylinder. On the flat diamonds, snow sticks to it and you can't see it anymore, on the cylinder, snow can't stick to the entire surface so you can still see it.

2b. again the reflective posts. In the US (at least in Montana), the posts are all along the side of the road, one every 15 feet or so. In Alberta, the posts only mark the road when there is a curve, when the road is straight, there are no posts.

Ok, so difference #1 is the major contributor to us ending up in the ditch somewhere around Wyola/Lodge Grass MT. I'm not sure about #2, you'll have to ask Jason since he was driving at the time. Anyways, we're driving along and a semi passes us on the left side kicking up so much snow that we can't see anything for a good 5 secs, enough time to put us in the ditch. We also came within less than 1 ft of taking out one of those reflective posts, or maybe I should say it came within 1 ft of taking out my mirror. We started clearing a path (there was a good foot of snow on the ground) to drive the car out when a guy from Calgary stops and helps pull us out. So I took over driving and had some difficulty because of difference #2. I'm used to only having reflective posts when there's a curve so I'm fully expecting the road to curve when I see the posts but it doesn't neccessarily happen. It doesn't really help that I only see some of the posts. So we make it to Billings, MT but not before one more event. A big thanks to God for keeping us safe. So I go to pass a semi not realizing that it's driving partway into my lane (remember we can't see the road that well). I'm about halfway past it when I roll over the rivets that let you know you're off the road, 1 second later the left side of the car is rolling on grass, to keep it from going further off road, I crank the steering wheel to the right and put my foot down harder on the gas to keep up my speed knowing that slowing down would likely mean going into the ditch again. All this time, we are still right beside the semi going 100 kph (60mph) so if my car had suddenly jumped back onto the road, we would have driven right into the side of the semi. With some pretty obvious divine intervention, I got the car back on the road and we ended up at a totally ghetto inn. It was inexpensive so we took it. It was so hot in the room we had to sleep with the window open. I looked at the thermostat that was in a locked box outside the room and it was set to 80F (26.6C)!!! We got breakfast at Denny's and went on our way again. I think Jason was getting a little nervous when we passed the little town of Belt just outside of Great Falls and I didn't stop for gas. We were pretty much running on empty, I ended up putting in 9.656 gal (36.5L) when we got to Great Falls. I didn't even know my tank could hold that much (I thought max capacity was 9.25gal/35L). Needless to say, we cut it really close but it definitely took some faith especially on my part, I knew that we were going to cut it close and I didn't bring a jerry can. The night before, Jason gassed up in Sheridan, WY and we made the 200km/120mile trek to Billings, MT. I figured that another ~220miles/350km wouldn't be a problem since we were averaging 45mpg. What I didn't take into account was how windy it would be since that put us down 5mpg the day before. I also put us into a snow bank, which I thought would be better than the rear end of a van. We were in some small town and I have to admit that I was following too close so it's partially my fault, there was a semi completely blocking one side of a two way street and the van in front of us decided to stop at the last possible second. Getting stuck twice (once today and the one last night) and having a heavy head wind ate up more gas than we should have had to. I know that the gas gauge in my car is pretty inaccurate but I watched as the gas needle came down more and more. It was in the red zone and we still had a good 60-70 miles to go and I was sure that there was no way we had more than 1 gal left in the tank, well that's what I thought anyways. So, if some crazy driving conditions and almost running out of gas wasn't enough fun, when we got to the border, they decided to search my car. The lady who searched it was really nice though. It was kind of funny because we had to empty our pockets and she looked through our wallets. She looked at everything in Jason's wallet but only glanced at what was in mine.

So, that was our eventful drive back to Calgary. Wow, that was long, now I have to go to bed. Good night, keep it real and if the opportunity arises, step it up a notch.

Posted by Phil at 8:14 PM