Today is Wet Wednesday…. Although, some would contend that today is ASH Wednesday. Now, see, it’s also National Dentist’s Day. Can we just call it Gnash Wednesday? I am almost certain that teeth are the only thing you can gnash. (Try it: Can you gnash your eyes, or gnash your frogs, or gnash a burp? Gnash a carrot, gnash a horse, gnash a stapler? What else CAN you gnash, other than freakin’ teeth?) So maybe we can save some time and increase our oral efficiency by just calling it Gnash Wednesday.
Back to the roads, though: Rain is coming down in droves, buckets, deluges, and whatever else means that it’s heavy. You’ll need to use the hyper wiper at times, although since the rain is patchy, sometimes your wipers will suddenly skid across a dry windshield. Speaking of patchy, we’ve got fog, too… patchy, in case you had not guessed. It seems to be hanging above 5,000 feet or so, and as you descend, you won’t see anything more than an insignificant wisp below there. However, the elevations above that have some almost-thick-but-still-just-moderate fog.
Rocks don’t seem to be a big issue—YET—but there are a number of smaller ones sprinkling the road already. I think I read in a survival magazine that you should never ever allow yourself to get in between a small rock and its mother. If you do, make yourself look as big as possible, bang pots and pans together, and play dead. Remove wet clothing, and drink as much rum as the St. Bernards will bring you. Then take a shot of epinephrine, and suck the poison out of the cuts that the tourniquet made. Or something like that… I don’t remember the exact details. I do know, for sure, that little rocks are a sign that bigger ones are likely to arrive on the road soon.
We’ve also got lightning, and its humble, walks-along-behind-servant, thunder. Had some on the mountain during the night, and the drive west this morning provided a really cool show of numerous gnarly strikes. Of course, you do know how to determine the distance of a strike from your own location, right? Well, since I cannot hear your answer (drowned out by the thunder), I’ll tell ya.
When you see the flash of light from the lightning, start counting off seconds. Every five seconds from the flash until your hear the thunder means about a mile of distance from you. That’s because sound, regardless of volume, travels at about five seconds per mile. So, if you see the flash, and hear the thunder, say, 15 seconds later, you can determine (use a calculator, if you are a recent product of California’s educational system) that the strike occurred three miles away from you. If the flash and the thunder occur simultaneously, well, check yourself for severe burns.
Okay, random trivia: As the faithful but perhaps masochistic readers of this column may know, I’m a fan of the Dodge Hellcat Challenger, which is the musclebound king of the jungle in the musclecar world. It’s got enough horsepower to move that top-tier Challenger just a tick beyond the 200 MPH mark on the dashboard. Well, it turns out, “Hellcat” is not an original name for a vehicle. In 1943 and 1944, Buick (notably, a General Motors rival of Dodge) built a Hellcat. It was called the M18 Hellcat, and was a “tank destroyer” used on battlefields all over the planet. It may not have been as fast as Dodge’s Hellcat… but there’s no doubt that this could have blown the doors (and the roof, and the mufflers, and the Fetzer valves, and everything else) off of anything else on the road today.
Okay, as I post, I’ve received notification of a rock slide IN PROGRESS at one of the “usual” locations: Just a little downhill from Upper Waterman Canyon Road’s exit, I am told that rocks are actively seeking lower elevations right now. Use caution everywhere today, ESPECIALLY in that area.
See you all tomorrow, on Fat Gnash cheese doodle Dentist’s Thursday, or whatever it is. I gotta ask Marty Graw what it’s called.