BlueMontana

I could say I am pretty smart…

reading back over my recent posts, it would appear that I was correct in my belief that if I put my truck up on blocks, and began working on my brakes, it would of course snow.

but, if I were truly smart, wouldn’t I then not follow that path?

apparently, regardless of what my mother would tell me, I am a complete idiot.

I bought all the brake parts on Thursday, and anxious to start (and get done) I put the truck on blocks Friday, and got the wheels off. This way, Sunday, Nikk and I could get right to it, and who knows, maybe even get the camper on the truck and take it this week! (what fun!)

As the sun went down we stood looking at the truck, and I said, ” I don’t know, maybe we should put the tires back on and just finger tighten the bolts, just in case it falls off the jack stands.” (moment of genius) Nikk agreed, as we weren’t real comfortable about seeing the front end so high and we did. Thank GOD.

It rained all day Saturday, and the ground under the jack stands got soaked thru. and by Sunday, the tires were sitting back on the ground. So Sunday Morning, we lifted the truck again, took the jack stands out, reinforced the ground under them, re-lifted the truck, and put it back on the stands.

We timidly examined all the parts, making sure we could remove, and re assemble them as much as we could before removing them. After we built up our false sense of security a little, we decided to go for it and pulled the caliper on the left side. ( no real issues.) 

Next came the fun part. trying to remove the nut holding on the rotor… (impossible) This involved soaking it with a product guaranteed to ease up frozen parts, (it doesn’t) several trips to kalispell to buy specialized tools, (which didn’t work) and ultimately driving Nikk and I to conclude, that, ” you know, those rotors don’t look all that bad to me, what do you think?” ( Nikk thought they looked as good as the new ones, except for the rust and grooves)

By this time, the sun, had again won the battle, and began to sink over the mountains. So as we came in covered in mud, muck, grease, and brake fluid, Chanda said, ” I think we better take the car this week, it looks like there will be snow everywhere we are going, and the studs are better on it; how did the brakes go, you all done?”

Snow?????? Yeah, that is where I stopped hearing her.

So a quick read of the Montana weather report, and Hazardous weather warnings, and I find out, we are looking at a statewide blizzard warning coming in Monday, and lasting 48 hours. I loved the part that said, don’t be fooled by the apparent slackening in the snowfall monday night, Do not venture out onto roadways as it will be followed by severe blizzard conditions resulting in 15 inches of snow in the valley’s 20 inches in the mountains with heavy winds 20 to 30 miles per hour. This storm will impact both humans and livestock, expect long periods of power outages, and bring livestock inside, or loose them. (that was hilarious)

My eye started twitching… I have a couple of problems with this whole thing. 

Of course the plow truck is down.. that is obvious, at least until Sunday because I have to work this week, (let’s be honest, it will probably be down until I have it towed to Midas, but I’m not there yet.)

The other is, I am planning to venture out on the roadway Tuesday morning, to drive to Billings and my job, which is only across the state, and 3 mountain passes. What the heck do I do? I better think about this. (is that really a smart thing?)

Well, we did get snow on Monday, about 5 inches where we live, I worked in Kalispell and they didn’t get near as much there, just a dusting. And by the time I got home that night, the weather had improved, a bit. So I decided to packed the car. ( the weather man always tends to over re-act)

Tuesday came, and you know, It didn’t look all that bad, Maybe they are over re-acting. Montana weather men do that a lot. So I headed off. By noon, I had hit some sort of snow storm near Seeley lake. By the time I got 13 miles out of Seeley lake, I was really having trouble seeing where the road was. (Why doesn’t the weather man ever tell us these storms are coming!)

I pushed on, because, you really can’t turn around when you can’t see the road. and as we got to the first pass, it really probably wasn’t safe to drive. I called the kids at the farm a couple of time for road reports, and they assured me, the passes were still open at this time, although Nolan reported that the roads were starting to close further north. (uh oh, better speed up)

We made it over Macdonald pass and into Helena, but man, was that pass bad, we followed a plow truck over. We stopped for a quick lunch, and sped toward Bozeman. A call to the kids, revealed they closed Macdonald pass now, and the road we were on, just behind us. (darn it, can’t this car do better than 70?)

We finally reached I-90, just as they closed the road to Helena, and were safe, if we could just get over the Bozeman pass, (and the wind on the plains wasn’t as bad as they predicted) Chanda remembered that they had installed some new highway closure barricades on the other side of the pass  as you hit the plains, and mentioned “let’s hope someone isn’t itching to use them” 

I-90 is usually the last road they close, because usually they try to keep the only interstate in the state open. Fortunately, as we reached Bozeman we noticed the snow relaxing, and the roads go to wet. We stopped for coffee at City brew and got over the pass as quick as we could.

The rest of the drive was pretty nice, No weather to speak of, and we even saw a peak or two of blue through the black clouds at times. By the time we reached Billings, we were even laughing with each other, and chanda had even stopped shaking and the color was beginning to come back into her face.

So the kids, say, not so much snow there either, it seems to be isolated between the passes, and this morning all the roads between the mountains are still closed. It starting to snow here, but it doesn’t look serious, and it looks like tomorrow, when we head back…..let see…… humm… the weather report is calling for a 70% chance of snow, and oh, they have a severe weather waning……. They are always over reacting with things like that….