December 19, 2005 at 11:20 pm · Filed under Life
What was supposed to be a 9 hour trip ended up taking around 11 hours because of the weather. Until we got to northern Oklahoma, the worst we had was rain. But, as we drove further north, the temperature dropped, the rain turned to snow, the snow accumulated on the roads, and the roads turned to ice. I was only able to go around 45 mph for several long stretches of highway. I did feel myself start to slide a few times, but never lost control or anything. Snow driving isn’t bad as long as you respect the roads and don’t get scared.
Getting into town was a relief. It was the first time I’d done any in-town driving with Freya in the snow, so of course I had to have a little fun on a few turns with the rear-wheel drive. I’ve gotten a much better feel for how Freya will react since my last experience of spinning around in an intersection. I’m looking forward to more rear-wheel fun the rest of the time I’m here. :-)
Today I started work back at the bank again. Coming back after being at school for a while is almost routine now. They had a list of projects that should keep me busy for the Christmas break, and I got back into the flow of things pretty quickly.
I’m looking forward to a few weeks with no classes to worry about. Being able to relax for a little while is good.
December 13, 2005 at 4:19 pm · Filed under Life
Dallas weekends seem to be a recurring theme this semester, at least more so than in previous semesters. The original grand plan was to go to Six Flags using some coupons LeTourneau had for students and then go eat dinner at Bolt’s house. But we found out that the forecast for the weekend included sub-freezing windchills and the park didn’t even open until 3 p.m., making scheduling the dinner with Bolt difficult. In the interest of simplicity, we eventually decided to drop the Six Flags idea and just hang out in Dallas, eat at Bolt’s and see the new Narnia movie. Michaela, Andrew, Courtney, Ludwhig, Schmorgan, Bubbles, Spork and I were the ones that went.
Driving in downtown Dallas while following Bubbles is interesting to say the least. I got in my first ever car accident on the way to Half Price Books. I didn’t see exactly what the car in front of Bubbles did, but apparently they slammed on their brakes, started to turn and just stopped in the middle of the road. This made Bubbles slam on his brakes, and of course since I was following, I had to as well. Bubbles managed to stop before he hit the car in front of him, but I wasn’t as lucky and rear-ended Bubbles’s car. It was a pretty solid bump, but it wasn’t too bad; you can’t see any marks at all on Freya, and Bubbles said there were just a few very small marks from the black plastic of my front bumper on his car. We were both relieved that our airbags didn’t go off. At least I know my antilock brakes work, I definitely felt them engage.
After Half Price Books, it was time to head to Bolt’s house where we were served an amazing breakfast-style dinner followed by the usual good time of sitting around talking about nothing in particular. From there, most of us went to see Narnia, but some of the group decided to go ice skating instead. Narnia was quite good, I’d read the book a few days before the trip so it would be fresh in my mind, and the movie seemed to be fairly true to the book. There were a few places where they added some unecessary drama, I suppose to make it more exciting, and the feel of some of the characters was different from what I got out of the book, but that’s always bound to happen.
One final down, three to go.
Hi there. My name is Curtis Hawthorne, but most of my friends call me Fjord.