The Gun Counter

MarkD wrote: ↑Tue May 14, 2019 1:40 pm I didn't notice her, I was too busy trying to see the exit ramp in the dark and rain. My wife pointed her out to me on the side of the road and I'm glad she did, otherwise I might've hit her. She just wandered into the road like she still had grass under her hooves, I hit the brake and horn at the same time which made her move most riki tik and got out of my way. I'm glad she did, if she'd done the deer-in-the-headlights thing I might not have missed her. A smaller animal I might not have reacted so strongly, but I did NOT want her coming thru my windshield.

I've never yet hit an animal while driving, and this would've been a sucky way to break that streak.

Do birds count? I run over them all the time.

MarkD wrote: ↑Mon May 13, 2019 5:28 pm Last night I had my first near miss on a deer while driving home from Mother's Day festivities.

Only one?! Waut til theres a half dozen does and fawns out wandering around, ususally right before sunset. I had that happen to me on route six about a month ago, right outside Hawley.

Driving faster than 20mph on any road up there at night, except the major highways, is an interesting form of suicide. Forget the deer, just with how often the roads go over a rise, then drop and turn, means if you're traveling at any speed, youll wind up upside down off the road in short order. I use my gps plugged in and running, even when i know where im going, as it gives you an idea of what is happening with the road just beyond the headlights.

HTRN wrote: ↑Thu May 16, 2019 4:22 am

MarkD wrote: ↑Mon May 13, 2019 5:28 pm Last night I had my first near miss on a deer while driving home from Mother's Day festivities.

Only one?! Waut til theres a half dozen does and fawns out wandering around, ususally right before sunset. I had that happen to me on route six about a month ago, right outside Hawley.

Driving faster than 20mph on any road up there at night, except the major highways, is an interesting form of suicide. Forget the deer, just with how often the roads go over a rise, then drop and turn, means if you're traveling at any speed, youll wind up upside down off the road in short order. I use my gps plugged in and running, even when i know where im going, as it gives you an idea of what is happening with the road just beyond the headlights.

I'll go a few miles out of my way to avoid some of those roads. Hills and twists at night are NOT fun, even before you toss the deer into the mix. We made the mistake of following the GPS one night on the way here, took us thru one of those roads. White knuckle all the way. Might be fun in a sports car during the day, but not when you can't see where you're going.

We once drove my wife's Mini Cooper S to Kentucky to visit family. Driving back from a late evening ( party, dinner, and chatter) the route back to the hotel included two major dipsy-dos with hard corners at both bottoms and both peaks, zero ambient lighting, no street lights, narrow roads, an unlit one-lane-wide underpass.... even with high quality headlight bulbs, driving lights, and fogs turned on to see the road sides better, the utter blackness was intimidating.

The local who wanted to do it at 50mph who was stuck behind us also lent the trip a delightful aire...

Some of the local roads in our last town in NJ were like that. Narrow, twisty, up and down ridgelines... and with Jersey drivers coming at you the other direction.

I once got run off the road by a fucking dump truck that topped a rise coming at me, on my side of the road, just as I was approaching the top of the rise. Was nice living in a largely wooded suburban town but that part I don't miss.

After moving.... Near us there was a local highway that had a spot where it was narrow, one lane in each direction, very little shoulder, and made an extended fairly sharp turn, and during the turn it did a sudden steep rise and dip.

Just before you got to the top of the rise you could see pretty much nothing, yet you and oncoming traffic both were making a turn and had to track your lane somehow.

They actually FIXED it. Widened the road, flattened it, removed a piece of hillside from the inside of the curve so the curve could be made more gradual and sightlines improved. It's great now.

And they did it quickly. MO is fucking awesome.

Of course there are now 2 subdivisions going in basically on the inside of that curve.

Alaska is pretty good about improving roads that don't meet current safety standards too... There are marooned sections of old road no longer in use, all along most of the highways up here, mostly out of sight behind vegetation. During one such big bypass project on the Glenn highway a few years back, they temporarily detoured all the traffic to some of those sections, so that was at least the second iteration of road straightening through there.

so you don't lose sight of things in a curve, just go blind at the bottom of frost heaves?

Yeah, the frost heaves are most of the reason for it. Have to rebuild the road every so often because of them no matter what, so it makes sense to improve at that time.

Because of all the thought police on various social media, the new term for "civil war 2" is "boogaloo".

I am not making this up.

Apparently, somebody started referring to as " civil war 2: Electric Boogaloo", in reference to that terrible breakdance movie from the 80s, and it just caught on.

Makes sense, everything v2 is 'xx boogaloo', that's been a meme forever.

Applying it to civil war v2... amuses me.