Daily Archives: 1/1/2006

Back!

Whew. Back from my “vacation”.

I-80 was open earlier today leaving Truckee, but it took 2 hours to go 4 miles to the area where cars were screened for tire chains/4WD. My Expedition is of course the latter and had no trouble navigating the icy conditions through the Donner Pass, but was buffetted by the high winds which made the overall trip a little less than completely fun. As I finally began the long downhill slope to Sacramento, I breathed a bit of a sigh of relief, but then managed to get myself all worked up again as I neared Sacremento. When I crossed into Yolo county, the winds really picked up and there was significant flooding in the valley floor: in Fairfield on both sides of the highway you could see telephone poles sticking out of vast expanses of water where the river had jumped its banks. The weather was ugly (I’m beginning to use that word far too much lately) with blinding rain and heavy winds. Yuck. The ride which takes three hours in good weather took us nearly six and a half today. I also noted that my car’s right wiper has malfunctioned, so I need to look at that tomorrow. When I got home and collected my mail I found that there was no bills, and smiled a little, but then found a note stuck to my door by one of my neighbors about five housses down indicating that they had had a mudslide today, and that we should check our drainage to make sure that water was flowing properly. It was already after dark, but I hiked up the hill to check the two drainage culverts, both of which seemed to be be reasonably open and clear of debris, and water seemed to be flowing nicely. The piece of my fence that has blown down before blew down again though. I’ll have to trek up there and fix it in the next day or so.

All in all, virtually every time I got in a car in this vacation I ran into some brutal, inclement weather. The vacation was largely fun, but I’m exhausted. It will be good to get back to work and be able to relax.

Happy New Year everyone!

Flooding on I-80, AP Photo by Brian Zweernik

Addendum: Here’s a photo of I-80 the day before I drove on it. That would not have been fun at all.