Blog! With pictures! And a story! · 2:47am Jan 12th, 2022
Happy National Splash in a Puddle and Splash Your Friends Day!
Which is a kinda odd holiday to have in January . . . up here, all our puddles are frozen. But anyway, on to the blog!
AlwaysDressesInStyle has added a second new chapter to Fimfic Authors Are In Your Bed. And for those of you who are wondering, it’s not too late to add another one. The ride never ends!
(You can really go down the rabbit hole with those images, but click with caution.)
Last Destination Unknown blog post, I asked people to remind me to tell you about the road to Clarksville (MI). Nobody asked, but here you go anyway.
I used to play Dungeons and Dragons in Hastings, and since my little truck wasn’t great on the highway, I liked to take back roads. Plus, that gave me a chance to explore. This was way back in the days before GPS, and a lot of the roads I took couldn’t be found on state maps, so you either needed a county map book, or to talk to someone local who knew the area. I had the advantage of working with a guy who lived in the area, and he gave me a couple options. Sometimes I’d try variations on them, and thus it was that I was cruising along through the countryside and came across Clarksville Rd.
As often happened when I drove in that part of the state, the song Take the Last Train to Clarksville came to mind. I’d never been to Clarksville, and it was a nice day so I turned down Clarskville Rd.
There was a yellow diamond warning sign saying “ROAD SETTLED” and I had no idea what that meant. It was kind of a lousy country road in need of repaving, and I got up to speed as quickly as a worn-out Sonoma can—
—and then I hit the spot where the road had settled.
Y’all might not know this, but roads are built with a ‘crown’ in the center, so water drains off them. Just like NASCARs are set up to turn left, your car (in the US) is set up to deal with this standard crown, and when it’s curved the other way because the road settled, all of a sudden driving gets a lot more interesting.
When I got back to work, I asked the guy at work about that, figuring he might know, and boy did he. Some of it was legend, I’m sure, but those are the best stories. He told me that the road had settled because it was built across swampland, and he said that while they were building the road, they lost a Caterpillar D9 dozer.
Said it started sinking in the muck and they couldn’t pull it out, and then he leaned in close and said “It was still running when it went under.”
Is that true? Who knows, it might be. Enough of that part of Michigan is swampy and wet, and the ground was obviously unstable enough that the road settled and the fact that they put up warning signs rather than fix it suggests that a repair was bound to be expensive.
To the best of my knowledge—I haven’t been out there in decades—the road’s been fixed. I can’t find the sign on Google Street View, although I didn’t do an exhaustive search. You can still take a train to Clarksville MI, but you’ll have to hop a freight.
And maybe somewhere along Clarksville Rd. there’s a Caterpillar D9 dozer sunk in the swamp, and it could be on a quiet, moonless night, if you listen closely, you can still hear it running.
I think I heard the dozer story from a friend of mine. He came down to the Buckeye State a few years ago. I don't remember
There's a car dealership near here that's lost multiple cars to sinkholes over the decades. I knew about the crown, but never what it was called. Your blogs never cease to inform and entertain!
I'm hoping to see some more chapters of Fimfic Authors Are In Your Bed, though I'm not (currently) planning on adding any more. Keep in mind this is a collab, not AlwaysDressesInStyle Hijacks A Fanfic.
Hmm, that might be fun. Do I need to read all (or even any) of the existing chapters first?
That sounds like a Michigan story if I’ve ever heard one. I know in my hometown, there’s a beautiful cemetery with steps to a small section dedicated to the founders of the city. Legend has it that when you die, you walk up those steps. And if you don’t see a light, you go to hell when you walk down. Hence, they were called the stairs to hell.
To be honest, I’m about 60% sure the guy I heard it from made it up on the spot.
For the Pacific Northwest, (the parts west of the Cascade Mountains and south of 55*, at least) It sounds like a perfectly normal winter day. After the weather we had here the first week of January 2022, it's no longer so much fun. Plenty of people are still displaced by the floods or the flood aftermath.
Ooh, Pinkie Pies in your washing machine? It's more likely than you'd think!
Michigan sounds like two or three Stephen King short stories mushed together with vengence.
Even us Sconnies know Michigan is basically the land of Mordor ...
"Happy National Splash in a Puddle and Splash Your Friends Day!"
...Uh...
"Which is a kinda odd holiday to have in January . . . up here, all our puddles are frozen."
Yeah, that. :D
I wonder where the holiday's from?
Anyway, though, thanks, and Happy NSiaPaSYF Day to you too? :D
"I asked people to remind me to tell you about the road to Clarksville (MI). Nobody asked"
Oh, sorry!
Thanks for the story!
Though now I'm curious: how, exactly, are cars set up to deal with that? It's not like they could rely on being in a consistent spot on a constant curvature, given different positions on the road, different roads, differences, I assume, between being on a two-lane road and being in a middle lane of a freeway, being in parking lots or the like...
And while I knew, as I recall, about roads being built like that (though I don't think I knew the terminology), I don't think I'd ever heard before of cars being particularly adapted to that shape.
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All I know I when they're repaving the highway, they do it in strips with an alarming "dip" in height difference between lanes. Or at least it is to me in my little Hyundai. I suppose would-be NASCAR drivers would be used to it, heh.
I Think they finally recovered that D8 that sank in the peatbog they were building the highway over.
At least, they actually dug down to the clay, over 30 foot of peat for a full 4 lane road, over half a mile, near the base of a reservoir dam, to make sure the damn thing didnt go anywhere further.
Near a thousand foot drop in little over 3 miles one way and 4 miles the other.
They call it The Highway In The Sky.
Good exercise on a push bike. Just watch the drag along draft from the 60 tonners next to you.
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Ah, that'd be another thing cars would have to contend with, wouldn't it? Thanks.
It's above freezing. Not sure if I should take the opportunity to get a car wash or put it off until the next time it's in the positive 20s, since I last got a wash 2 weeks ago.
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I have to imagine that every state has a story like that; whether it’s true or not, it’s hard to say.
I can say that after the dam failures in Michigan, they found and recovered a steam shovel that had been left behind when the lake was created . . . for whatever reason, whoever was using it to dig during construction never removed it from the soon-to-be lakebed.
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I’d put my car dealership somewhere else, just saying. After the first car fell in the hole, to be honest.
You and me both. So far nobody’s taken up the mantle, but a man can hope.
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You don’t have to! The first couple chapters should give you an idea what it’s about, and then you can pick some that kind of appeal to you if you want to read more to get an idea what kinds of things happen to the second-person narrator.
Or if you don’t want to do that, I can PM you a general idea of what the chapters are like.
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Huh, that’s interesting. I’ve never heard any particular cemetery legends that I can remember, not to say that there aren’t some at various local cemeteries. One town where I used to live there was a run-down old Victorian mansion which was said to be haunted. However, last time I was there the house had been renovated, so maybe they got the ghosts out or maybe the ghosts were okay with their home being fixed up.
Heh, that’s actually a great hook for a story. Negotiating with the ghosts to renovate an old house. “Look, guys, I respect your space and all that, but you gotta admit the manor’s looking kinda run-down.”
Probably about half the legends get their start that way.
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IMHO, it’s not supposed to rain in the winter, it’s supposed to snow. Ran should only happen from March to November.
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I know, right? That’s why I’m always careful when I open the lid, you never know if one or several might spring out.
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Which is funny, ‘cause when I read a King story, I think to myself ‘this is the kind of thing that would never happen in Michigan.’
At least in terms of my interests, most of the tales revolve around the Great Lakes, especially storms on the Great Lakes. Dunno as much about the things that happen on land
5626550
Nonsense, we haven’t got a single volcano. Just lakes that will kill you and in the case of Superior, keep your body.
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I dunno, it sounds made up to me. I found a list online and that seemed the most pony-like holiday. By pure coincidence, today is National Michigan Day. And National Winnie the Pooh Day. National Michigan Day is made up by a calendar company (they admit it on their website); Winnie the Pooh Day celebrated A.A. Milne’s birthday.
That’s okay, it could have been something most people weren’t interested in. But they got it anyway
You’re welcome!
It’s actually pretty simple. All other factors taken out, a car is going to drift to the low side of a slanted road, so with typical road crown, a car is going to want to go to the right, towards the shoulder of the road, since that’s ‘downhill’ as far as the car is concerned. So, you set the alignment on the front wheels to give the car a slight tendency to turn to the left, which should counteract the road crown.
In the case of a settled road where the crown is reversed, now you’ve got a car that wants to turn left and a road that makes the car want to turn left, so instead of making gentle corrections on the steering wheel, you’re kind of fighting the car to make it go the way you want it to.
It’s not a terribly difficult task, but when it happens all of a sudden at sixty, it gets interesting for a few seconds.
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Yeah, the typical resurfacing process leaves a few inches of fresh asphalt on top of the old road surface, which also leaves a tricky dropoff at the edge for cars (and getting back on the lip does take a bit of finesse; same thing happens sometimes with soft shoulders). The other alternate is to shut down the road entirely, until all the lanes are paved, and a lot of people don’t like that inconvenience.
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Sometimes that’s what you’ve gotta do to make the road stay where you want it. When I was down in the rural Tennessee mountains some years back, there were sections of the road that just fell off, and they didn’t have the money to fix it, so they put cones around the missing bits.
That sounds more like a ramp than a road
Downhill side’s got to be fun, though.
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I don’t wash my cars, I just wait for the rain to rinse them off.
Yeah, that’s not great for the paintwork, but then most of my cars were gotten cheap enough that even filling the gas tank is a non-trivial percentage of the purchase price. Not gonna fork out quarters to get it clean, you know?
And that’s assuming the paint could even shine up . . .
cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/879533986303606834/933156844724166726/diesel_diesel_diesel.jpg
Legit washing this thing would cost at least 1% of the purchase price, possibly 3-4% if I took it to a drive-through car wash.
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Okay, I've read a few. This is stupid and I love it!
I'm gonna write one titled "Izzy Moonbow is in Your Bed, With Glitter. Lots of Glitter."
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They're insured. Now, if their insurance company were to cancel that coverage...
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Do eeeeeeeeet!
5628875
Seconded . . .
Do eeeeeeeeeeeeeet!
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“One more car goes in the hole, and your policy’s gone, buddy.”
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I will! No promises it'll be anytime soon, though.
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I bumped the story after several...years...of inactivity. I don't think a delay will be a big problem.
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Oh, the downhill side was Fun.
Took a 3 ton brick of an old gas board van, got to its top speed of 55mph, then took it out of gear and the thing Accelerated measurably.
It was falling down the hill at over 60 mph, faster than it was designed to go, and vibrating horribly.
Fortunately the motorway junction roundabout was behind and all that was ahead was the bridge over the river and the need to stop rather rapidly before reaching the crossroad traffic lights just a little further uphill on the other side.
I think I remember the back wheels not quite clearing the stop line.
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Reminds me of the time I took my old Chevy truck that was never meant to go on the highway through the Appalachian Mountains. Inline-six with a three-speed manual, it topped out at 35mph on the uphill grades, I was getting passed by gravel trains. On the downhills, though, I ran her out as fast as she’d go for momentum up the next hill, put that speedometer into ranges GM had never expected it would see.
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Huh; neat. Thanks.
:)
:D
:)
Ah, thanks! That makes sense.