After we fuel up, and get the rigs facing into the snow again, well Northbound. Into the snow could have been in any direction. Polar vortex, winter hurricane, whatever you want to call it, it SUCKED. My mind kept going back to that damn song while we were looking for the "Big lake they call Gitche Gumee" to get out of this storm. Actually found myself wondering what that storm The Edmund Fitzgerald didn't make it through must have been like....
CHOP!!!! I'M TRYING BILLY!!!! Jesus, Mary and Joseph this is bad. Who invited Elvis again? I just saw him sitting on the guard rail! We should have pulled over a long time ago, like the friggin SNOW PLOW DRIVERS DID!!! Not even exaggerating, there were literally snow plow drivers that said the hell with this, only idiots would be trying to drive through this, and pulled over. Guess who the idiots passing the snow plows were? Yup. Us.
Where in the hell is that god damn bridge? It's friggin huge, I don't think we missed it. Again, my brain starts wandering off to that damn song again, somehow trying to distract myself from this brutal situation we're in. This storm we were in the middle of "turned minutes into hours" just like the song. We HAVE to be getting close. What seemed like 4 hours later, oh wait. It WAS 4 hours later, we start seeing signs for the Mackinac bridge, and the storm eases up on us a little bit. Not enough to set the cruise control, or even take the rig out of 4WD yet, but it eases up. At this point the sun starts coming up, Chop and I are on our second wind and feeling pretty good about things in general, and looking forward to not only the bridge, but the friends and good times we're expecting to find somewhere north of it. If we only knew.....
The rest of the trip south of the Mackinac was pretty uneventful, well as uneventful as it can get driving through a winter hurricane. The wimpy snow plow drivers were back on the road finally, and we could actually see blacktop once in a while. It was covered with CLEAR ice and slippery as hell, but it was blacktop. We finally see the bridge off near the horizon, and can see clear skies over it, even though we were still in the storm. We tune to the AM station run by the bridge authority, and the recorded voice, as nice as the man sounded, was warning us of a high wind advisory on the bridge, 20 MPH speed limit for vehicles with trailers, and in all likelihood a dark icy watery drowning death after being blown off of the side of the bridge and plummeting into Lake Huron.
20 MPH over the bridge, and it was rather refreshing, maybe exciting. Gale force winds trying to blow us off of it, but all things point to nicer weather and much easier driving immediately on the other side of it, so it was both refreshing and exciting. Stopped at the toll booth on the north shore of the Mackinac Straits, pay our toll and regroup with Pat whom we lost track of in Winter Storm Petros. From our vantage point on the north shore, we can literally see the northern most part of Winter Storm Prick... er I mean Petros.
We survived!! Ha ha kiss our asses Edmund Fitzgerald! Granted we didn't have 27,000 tons of iron ore on board, but we did something you couldn't. We made it through the storm. And we had a trailer!
With a renewed spirit, and all 4 of us in the truck now awake, the two dummies in the back slept through ALL DAT FUN, we know we're only an hour and a half from Curtis Ichigan, and a few hours past that on the sleds is Newberry! Gasserup Buttercup!
Storm is behind us, clear dry roads in front of us, and as Chop so eloquently put it "Billy! We're back to green flag racing!" Sun is starting to come up enough that the sun glasses come out. Warm cup of coffee in my hands, thoughts of wind in my face, and a mind wandering off to all of the stories we'll soon have to tell of the trails, lake racing, and having an absolute blast on our annual long weekend trip. It becomes painfully obvious....
There is a SEVERE lack of snow! We need it. I'm not seeing it. I can actually see grass in some areas where there should be a couple feet of it. Hell, it's right in the name, SNOWmobile. For the next hour and a half, we can make actual time now, none of that "minutes turned into hours" bullshit, we head west and north through Ichigan's UP. Its so beautiful up there, but it IS Ichigan, so we refer to it as Canada South. As we head into Curtis, there are normally plowed trails on the side of the road, just for sleds, the snow plows literally leave a few inches on the ground for snowmobiles to get around. All I'm seeing is dry roads, and an icy mess where we're supposed to ride. We have about a three and a half mile trip along the roads (perfectly legal up there) to get from our cabin to the trail head, and I'm still in the truck looking down at ice, dirt, and blacktop. Not snow.
We pull in to the resort and up to our cabin, the rest of the gang already made it here safe and sound through the storm. Pain in the ass to get ready again this year, pain in the ass to actually GET HERE this year, but seeing the whole gang together in Curtis automatically puts a smile on your face. That ear-to-ear "what kind of trouble are we going to get ourselves into this year?" type of grin. The boys start coming out of the cabin to greet us and compare Petros notes, and it's nice to stretch our legs a bit. Danny walks out with music playing, like he has his own theme song when he walks into a room. I can't quite make it out, I'm old and partially deaf, but as he gets closer I hear "The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down..."
I KNOW that song! The two halves of our group still don't know each other's relationship with that shipwreck, but we would soon. And once we all learned what it was, it would lead us down a path none of us expected, wanted, or could ever even imagine.........
(to be continued)
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