Igor's Odyssey

["Dave C." <conner@cfm.ohio-state.edu>]

Igor,
I see you won't be taking the trip in December...smart move:-)

I can't resist relating a bit of my experience driving between Cheyenne,
Wyoming and the East Coast in December/January...I lived in Cheyenne for
several years.
One clue as to what you can expect is that at the outskirts of Cheyenne on
the Interstate, they have huge gates.  When the weather gets bad, they just
shut the gates...the Interstate is closed!
Anyone caught going around the gates is subject to arrest.
The blizzards can be fearsome.  Once I headed east out of Cheyenne in a VW
Rabbit just after a blizzard had passed thru and the gates were opened.
Man, it was COLD...daytime high the teens (Fahrenheit)!  Wind still blowing
steadily above 50 mph with higher gusts.  About a foot of snow everywhere
with DRIFTS.  The road conditions got real bad in Nebraska where the traffic
had packed the snow into lumpy ice on the roadway...very treacherous as the
ice bumps tended to throw the car sideways.  At one point the car ended up
pitched off the side of the road in the deep snow.  After we got going again
we spent the night in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere in Nebraska.  The
next day we opted for the old two lane road which parallels the Interstate
(US 30).  It was covered with about 8 inches of snow and we drove 200 miles
on it with chains...this being better than dealing with the ice covered
Interstate. At that point we were far enough East that the storm conditions
hadn't been nearly so bad and we were able to resume driving on the
Interstate. I hate to think how long we might have been in that small town
if we had to stay and wait for conditions to improve.
DC
David Conner  Columbus, OH 
'87 5KS,  '89 100E, '86 4KCSQ