In case you haven’t heard, the weather all over Oregon has been a cold, nasty mess this week, with the temps earlier this week dropping below zero (with high temps in the single digits — Fahrenheit degrees, not Celsius). There are some things I’ve learned throughout this:
- My car battery — which is about the size of a go-cart battery and equally as powerful — doesn’t seem to like the temps below 10°F. I had to jump my car or pop the clutch on both Monday and Tuesday when the temps were in single digits. Get above 10°F, and it starts fine. It struggles, but it starts. I actually had an old, fully functional, basically new car battery in my garage (long story) that I just put in my trunk and kept it in there with my cables in case I couldn’t find somebody to jump me or I didn’t park on a hill so I could pop the clutch (which is a pain in the cold, but still possible).
- People in the Willamette Valley totally freak out when there’s ice and snow. If you read some of the Portland-area blogs or even the newspapers from the area, it’s like the end of the world over there. Granted, I know that Portland is not built for that kind of thing, nor are its residents, but I had a great laugh, watching folks try to drive in it. Portland, Eugene, and Salem are ripe with mass transit options — why people aren’t using them up there when it gets like this is beyond me.
- People become retarded when driving in the crap. I drive to work down Hwy 97 to Sunriver from Bend — one of the ugliest stretches of highway this time of year — and am constantly seeing people a) Driving way too fast for the conditions (it’s a frickin’ skating rink, folks) and b) driving with out their headlights on blizzards (like it was on the highway today). I nearly rear-ended a few people today because I couldn’t see them until I nearly clobbered them. They’re in white cars, in white-out weather, with no lights on. And they think because they’re in a big ol’ SUV or pickup that they can still drive the speed limit (or over it). Frickin’ idiots.
- My headlights need cleaning. They’re pretty heavily oxidized, and when I drive home at night, I need all the help I can get. Any recommendations, other than the various solutions suggested on Google? Anything particular work for anybody?