My friend Yvonne and I made plans last night to go grocery shopping tonight. She called me this afternoon and said, "I have an idea..." She had to finish up work and yet hadn't taken her dog out for a run. So she thought she'd see if I'd want to go out in the woods with her and Akia before we headed to the grocery store. OF COURSE I wanted to go! She told me to bring my camera in case I wanted to take some great pics of the snow out in the woods. Well, duh...my camera goes with me everywhere!
By the time we got out there, it was starting to get kind of dark. Yvonne was a little worried about going down any roads that weren't plowed because her truck tires need to be replaced. So we found a road that had been plowed at some point, and had also looked to recently have had some traffic (one vehicle anyway). She drove as far as the area where she wanted to hike and was about to park when she slid off of the snow-covered dirt road into the soft snow bank. She was having trouble getting the truck out of the bank, so I jumped out to push. Yvonne was so mad because -- like me -- she absolutely hates feeling helpless. And she didn't think she'd be able to get the truck out. But I wasn't all that worried. I'd been in this situation before myself, but always managed to get unstuck.
Her truck tires just kept spinning, though, because the treads on them are not very good. And the truck was kind of hung up in the snow bank. (Of course, she hadn't yet put the shovel in her truck, so we had nothing to use but our hands, feet and sticks to dig out the snow from under the truck.) I found some small branches to put under her tire, then got back in front of the truck to push it (she had to go backwards because her tires weren't good enough to go up the little hill in front of the truck). After a few more tries, we finally got the truck moving....only to have it slide back into the soft snow. Not once...but two more times this happened. Then the person who had obviously driven in on that road before us spotted our trouble on his way back out (thank goodness). It was hard on my back trying to push by myself, so it was nice -- and easier -- with someone else helping.
The problem, though, was that Yvonne tried turning around on another side road that hadn't been plowed at all. Of course, she got stuck. And this time it was not going to be so easy to get her out. The rear driver's side tire wasn't even touching the road. She was totally hung up in the snow this time. The guy who was helping to push didn't have a shovel or tow strap either, so we had a bigger problem this time. It was at this point we realized her 4WD wasn't working either. But after much digging and pushing, we finally got the truck out and went on our way.
After we both got back into the vehicle, Yvonne kept thanking me for helping her. Finally I said, "What are you thanking me for? I'm a Yooper, remember? This kind of thing happens up here all of the time!" So then she says, "Okay. Then thank you for being a Yooper." (Yvonne, by the way, is NOT a Yooper. She's a Troll -- from Lower Michigan. Sure, she's a redneck. But a redneck Troll. heh heh...there's a difference. Believe me.) She had warned me that her tires weren't very good, so to expect to have the truck slide around on the roads a bit. We just hadn't expected as quite an adventure as this.
The good news is we got out, managed to find another place to take a short hike, saw a doe, two fawns and a buck...and got the grocery shopping done. The bad news is I didn't get pictures because it was too dark for my little camera.
Believe me...it was funnier while it was happening. I'm just not any good at the retelling of it.
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