Wednesday, September 10, 2014

Winter driving as a greenhorn

Well over the past ten or so years, I have had the pleasure of hearing very descriptive stories from my oldest brother about his experiences of driving a big rig in the winter....he used to haul over the USA and Canada...now he's just in Canada but he goes to the coldest place ever....Fort Mac....YIKES...and some of the stories he tells me from there are terrifying.
So he giggles with delight at the thought of his baby sister now going through the same thing...however....I don't have to go nearly as far as he does...I'm just a local driver who occasionally goes no more then a two hour trip out of town...but none the less...driving in snow whether your five minutes away or five hours away can be a bit tricky in a big truck.
What made today even worse was it's the first snow fall of the year, first time I am driving a big truck in the snow, and I just finished watching an episode of Highway Thru Hell on t.v last night where there were a ton of truck accidents...so yeah....I was a little on edge lol.
Today I had to drive to Waterton Park, where I just was five days ago with my kids and it was so warm and beautiful...and today it was cold but yet still beautiful...just a white kinda beautiful is all lol.


This was not at all what me and the kids saw five days ago when here

Can you believe this is the same beach!!! Crazy what happens in Canada!





So I had this South African guy who works at the same place I do...this is his second winter here, last winter was his first time seeing snow and driving in it...so I found it hilarious that HE was giving me driving instructions on how to best drive in snow....his advise was "you just go, no need to stop or slow, you just get there"...and the other piece of advice was this "always make sure you wipers do not freeze...you will die of heat but you crank your heater defrost and then roll your window down for air breathing" LOL...seriously...WTF...is this what someone here in Canada taught him when he first came here?
So I started to get some accumulation of ice on the window and wipers and it was not going away...so I cranked the heat defrost...which totally worked, got rid of the build up, but just like he said, you can't freakin breath cause it's so damn hot...so there I am, driving down the road in a snow storm with my window open and the heat blastin...all cause the dude from South Africa advised me to do so and it worked lol
So I shall see how my winter driving goes...this was only the first day of I am sure to be many more experiences in the snow...happy white knuckle driving!

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