August 1979, we toured the country in a Cessna-C180 with a Honda Trail-90 'Suitcase Cycle' in the boot.

California freeways had 'grooves' that made the Honda tires always 'squiggle' half-inch as you rode.

We had landed at San Carlos Airport and toured San Francisco and Oakland and were riding down the East side of SF Bay on a freeway.

Three lanes at 55 mph with a Greyhound Bus passing on left as we were passing a semi on the right going through an underpass.

All of a sudden that half-inch 'squiggle' became several inches and you could see the bus and semi doing the same.

When we arrived back at San Carlos Airport, found the Aircraft Mechanics upset about the earthquake that had just knocked over their tool shelves.

 

Haha! that actually sounds kind of fun.. and better than hiding under the door frame in a hallway

 

Nice to know a MINI will do in the place of a generator!

 

That'll do it, all right!

Tex, my favorite area to live in is the Midwest. Tornadoes hit, but they're highly limited as to area. They're really just over-ambitious thunderstorms, and when the sky turns greenish yellow, you watch out for them. Unlike hurricanes, you don't get much warning, but 30 seconds and they're over, and they're usually only on the ground about 1/2 mile or so. Those are pretty good odds. And yes, I HAVE been through a tornado--in Houston. Go figure.

pilotart, back in the day, I used to fly, too. Hubby and I always wondered if those bikes were any good. Then again, it would have taken two of them, and neither our C-150 or our Yankee would have accommodated even one.

Funniest thing I heard on television--the day BEFORE the storm--was the request to "keep calm." That was after 3 days of 24 hour storm-to-be coverage guaranteed to bring out the ulcers in anyone...

I'm just grateful that we didn't have a Katrina-like death count, as the storm surge was pretty bad.

 

After surviving the blizzard of 1978 in Massachusetts, moving to California via a roadtrip down the East Coast and across the bottom of the US, hurricane Juan hitting us in Louisana on the way, to the Loma Prieta Earthquake in 1989 and now living here in the Midwest (Missouri to be exact) aka tornado alley, I can honestly say "been there, done that!" It's kinda hard to find a safe state to live in.

 

So true! One thing about snow--it stays "put," at least for a while. I guess that can be good or bad, but at least you don't drown. I remember a blizzard in Chicago in '67 when 24" fell in a little over a day. Out where we lived, on the Indiana side, it was even more. In places in our yard it had drifted to just under 5 feet! Then again, it wasn't deep at all in the driveway. Of course, no one was driving anyway. Kind of made an old-timey scene as we all used sleds for our grocery shopping...

Oh, and don't forget ice storms! In the late 60's we lived in St. Louis. I remember going to a movie with my soon-to-be-husband and coming out afterward, only to be greeted by 1/4" of hard ice on the windows and body of our car. We didn't even have a clue it was coming. We certainly didn't need a warm-up afterwards! Incidentally, we still have that car--a '64 Porsche 356 SC Sunroof Coupe...

 

Oh yeah, forgot that! That was my first welcome to Kansas City 3 months after I moved here in 2001, an ice storm! No power for 5 days!!!

 

Remind me not to move near you--you're a jinx!

(At least people can...um...make each other warm.) (Did I say that?)

 

A little off topic but still interesting story about gallons per hour being burned in the mini.

Until two or three weeks ago, I still had my supercharged H2. Most of the time I would leave it on average miles per gallon just because....

I remember sitting at a light (which is what, 3-5 minutes??) and watching my average gas mileage drop from 9.2->9.1->9.0 all over a few minutes of sitting at a traffic light.

On July 4th this year, my family and I all packed into the mini and drove to Charleston, SC to watch fireworks on the spur of the moment.

Without getting into a LONG story, we ended up driving home at 12am because we couldn't find a hotel room anywhere from Charleston to Georgetown to Myrtle Beach to Conway... NOWHERE.

Finally at 4am when we're in Conway when I couldn't go any longer (been up since 5am the previous morning) we pull into a parking lot to get some sleep. (for those of you at home, don't try this... sleeping in a mini with 4 people is stupid and dangerous )

Point of this story is we fell asleep for an hour and a half and I was surprised to see that my average gas mileage had dropped from 34.7 to 34.5....

I thought it was pretty impressive...

Back to the original poster.... Deb, glad you made it through that mess. Living in the Carolina's, we've had a few times like that and it's a wierd feeling, it's like being in one of those movies that depicts the end of the earth.... ie. stores closed, no gas, no electricity.

One question though... when you drove to the airport to get your husband, why all the ice? To convert to water??

I heard that on the news that people were going out buying up all the ice (around here, it's bread and milk... yeah, like if I'm going to be stuck in my house without power, I want cereal and toast )

Thanks dear, hopefully everything is back to normal.

Mark

 

The longer you drive without resetting the mpg computer, the longer it takes for the average to be affected. Just like adding 5 to a million doesn't make much of a percentage increase, but adding 5 to 10 makes a 50% increase.

Sounds like you had been driving for many hours, then idled the engine for an hour and a half, using a little fuel but without adding any miles. Probably just basic math, rather than anything special about MINI.

 

I agree...makes complete sense. I only had 350-400 on the odometer reset when I checked it out.

However, I reset the trip odometer and average gas mileage on the H2 every tankful... point being, that I couldn't have had more than 300 miles on the reset.

Mark

 

To try to save as much food as possible. A cold Coke/beer was pretty nice after all that yardwork, too. We had enough water and juice that I wasn't too worried, but just in case we did buy 10 gallon jugs of the clear stuff. I really did want to preserve the water in my water cellar--some of it came from the MINI dealer and has a really nice label! Really thick plastic, though--feels like it's about 3 times as thick as the newer Ozarka bottles. (Understand that I don't like to use them at all, and refill them many times.)

And, like any good hurricane expector, I had a bathtub full of water for toilets. In a pinch I could have used that, too, I guess. In fact, I had cleaned out the tub before I filled it, just in case.

I read somewhere that the #1 stock-up item is...toilet paper. I don't know if this is true, but there is a perverse sort of reasoning, I guess.

We're in good shape, but I've seen an awful lot of downed trees and limbs. And I wish I owned a trainful of plywood! Just as a little example--in one area along Interstate 45 they planted some nice long-needled pines, and a few other trees (looked like oaks when I passed). The pines are now about 10 to 15 feet. EVERY ONE of them is now either uprooted or at least 45 degrees off straight--bunches of them! In fact, in our subdivision, we have big trees and little, but I've never seen a storm that took out so many little ones--just laid over on their sides, roots and all. After all, there just aren't that many leaves on the 15-footers.