Dinner at Frankie’s Italian Restaurant in Chilliwack

[bborzell]

Glad we decided to leave on Friday instead of Saturday. Weather reports were all over the place with regard to timing, but most focused on precipitation and very cold air. Evertually that all translated to freezing rain and your basic North Dakota type ice storm.

We got as far as Eugene, Oregon when I5 north suddenly turned into the preliminary phase of bumper cars leading to a demolition derby. It was immediately clear that nothing good would come from continuing north on I5.

What was not yet clear was that the alternative route, taking a west turn and going up US101 would eventually result in some 125 detour miles which consisted predominately of solid ice.

It wasn’t as much of an “out of the frying pan…” kind of thing as it might have sounded at first. We avoided an enormous number of woefully unprepared drivers on I5 in vehicle that were only slightly as unprepared as their occupants. We got to revisit “Bob’s Creek” on the coast and we even got to see four Electrify America EV charging stations just south of Astoria that were all working.

Our Ram truck is clearly the most competent adverse weather vehicle I have ever owned. 2WD, 4W Auto, 4WD High and 4WD Low offer tools for pretty much all conditions that a reasonably competent driver might expect to take on.

We were in 4W Auto for much of the changing surfaces from dry (not much) to ice patches to larger ice sections, but most of the detour miles were on 4W High with speeds ranging from 25 to 45 with occasional spurts to 50 mph.

During the entire run on ice with temps in the low to mid 20s, i felt only one slight wiggle that was probably less than a few inches laterally and over as quickly as it started. I think it was where one wheel broke through the ice into a pocket of water beneath the surface. Other than that, it was solid tracking at all times.

But, we were not on the OEM tires. The original Pirelli tires were a compromise at best. They were designed as “All Weather” tires for folks who would never go off road, would rarely drive in snow greater than a few inches and rarely in weather much below 40 degrees F. In truth, I cursed them both in dirt, mud and snow until I replaced them a couple of months ago.

This trip was on Cooper Discoverer AT3 XL tires. While they are not rated as full winter tires, they handled ice admirably. I don’t think I will ever again go back to swapping from all weathers to winter tires.

So, this morning, we left Astoria on ice and drove to Longview where we hit I5 which had been deiced. Then on to Sumas where we encountered a Canadian border guy who must have started the job sometime last week. After getting a scatter of every type of prying question about pretty much every potential contraband item that might find its way into Canada, with a few verbatim repeats of previous questions, we were on our way.

Our hotel is about 5 minutes from ETI where' we have a 9:00 AM appointment to walk through our E23 and Frankie’s is 5 minutes east off of Highway 1.

Our truck is still covered with ice. All if the warm water car washes in Chilliwack are shut down because of frozen water supplies so it looks like our shiny trailer will move out behind a very crusty and gruff TV. Then it will be a quick U turn and head back home.