Stuck in a Jeep

My daughter is 15 and wants to start drivers training. On a Sunday afternoon she asked if I would take her to Allegan woods so she could practice driving. Allegan woods is mostly two tracks and unimproved roads. More importantly there is very little traffic. It is a perfect place for beginning drivers.

After a quick stop at BK for lunch, we start the 15 mile trip to Allegan. Once we found a remote gravel road we switched drivers. She does very well for several miles. It wasn't long before the gravel turned to dirt and not much longer when we were faced with a large body of water in the middle of the trail.

For 30 years of four-wheeling I have had a hard and fast rule; do not cross water unless there is another vehicle with you. Period.

I am not sure what possessed me to try driving through this one. (I stated in an earlier post that I should re-evaluate my decision making process at times, this is one of those times.)

It looked harmless enough, no mud or deep ruts in sight. The entrance and exits were smooth sand.  At any rate, we switched places so I was driving and continued slowly into the water. There was another moment that I could have reconsidered and backed out when the front end dropped into a rut about halfway across. Instead, I just floored it and powered through. I knew we would be in trouble if we had to come back through because it was a very rough, and deep crossing.

About an eighth of a mile further we come to a bona-fide mud hole. Completely exposed and not possible to cross. I turned around and went back with a feeling of foreboding.

We sat at the edge of the water for several minutes considering how and where to cross. Finally I just went for it. Again, at the halfway point I felt the front end drop into something big, and again floored it. This time there was not enough traction to make it through. We stopped. We were hung up on the axles, the wheels not touching anything but water.

After a few more minutes of considering what to do, I came to the inevitable conclusion that I was gonna get my feet wet.

View from the passenger door. The water was up to the doors.

The water was only ankle deep next to the door. I was lucky and drove into someone else's ruts, two feet either side and it would have been a walk in the park.

 

A half mile up the road were some guys cutting trees. I squished up the road in my soggy sneakers and asked for help. Reluctantly a large bearded dude agreed to help and drove his pickup to the edge of my private lake.

I slogged around to get my tow strap and he attached a chain to the plow frame of his POS, but not stuck, Chevy.

After a couple of tugs we felt something give, and it wasn't the Jeep moving.

I got out, walked around front and saw this;

only it was up to the bottom of the bumper in mud. Not a happy moment!

We were able to attach the tow strap to the sway bar on the opposite side and easily dragged the Jeep to shore. In fact, he only pulled us about three feet before we under our own power again. Maybe if I would have gotten on it sooner......

When I when I got back in the Jeep after we were on relatively dry ground, this is the sight that greeted me;

Yep, the water was coming in through the drain holes.

This is a shot of the back seat.

After spending a few quality moments bailing water with a Burger King cup, I bent the bumper closer to the Jeep for the ride home.

The body of the Jeep is 28" from the ground. When I was sloshing around on either side of the Jeep, the water was never more than 8" deep. Out of a 25' wide puddle, I managed to find an extra 20" of water and drive straight into it.

A few more pics;

 

Showing my best side.

When we got home, I spent some quality time with a bucket and hose and cleaned most of it up. The bumper was easily repaired with some new bolts and a hammer.

The water on the floor was soaked up using some absorbent cloth things we had around for spills. I let them just set on the floor for a while and they would be dripping wet. I would wring them out, an put 'em back in. After about 10 times the floor went from soaked to damp.

 

I remember now why I made the "don't drive through water alone" rule. I hope it is another 30 years before I forget again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Stress

Years ago, when I worked at major office manufacturing company as a maintenance dood, I occasionally had to go to the work surface packaging area to repair something. The work surface packaging area consisted of many sizes of cardboard boxes into which the workers had to put work surfaces, or desktops. They also had to put Z-molding on the sides of the tops before they went into the boxes. Z-molding is the rubber bumper edge on much of the older work surfaces.
There was a man in this department, I will call him Jim, that was always stressed out over the smallest things. He was about 200 pounds overweight and was always yelling at somebody for some perceived offence. No matter what happened, whether the cardboard supply was low or one of the Z-molding rotary tables was malfunctioning, he would get completely worked up and give everybody hell. Consequently us maintenance guys would argue about who was going to get a verbal lashing from Jim, and our response time was very long.  I often wondered why a guy with such a simple job could get so stressed out over such a minor malfunction. Several times I remember thinking; what would this guy do if he had a real job?
This started me thinking about stress and how folks deal with it. It seems that some people rise to a certain level of stress no matter how little actual stress is warranted. It seems as if the human spirit will create stress even during an absence of it. As I give it a bit more of my limited brain power, (I was riding a bicycle at the time, so I didn’t need all of the thought process), I come to a potentially flawed conclusion;  The average human needs stress much like an engine needs a load. Have you ever noticed that a car, motorcycle, or even a lawnmower seems to run better under a load?

Is it possible that stress is the load that the human race needs to operate efficiently or effectively?

Lake Michigan SS1000

If you are looking for the Lake Michigan SS1000 ride report, I moved it to here.