A drive to Anchorage and back on a chilly day

According to the thermometer in our Ford Escape, which my comparison tests show to be spot on, it was -23 F (-31 C) when I left the house a few minutes before 9:00 AM to drive Margie to Anchorage so she can spend the week babysitting Lynx. It is great fun to have a thermometer in our car and to see the temperature variations as we drive through this area. During either a winter cold snap or a summer heat wave, those temperature variations can be quite dramatic, as much as 20 degrees and sometimes even more.

And, during a cold snap, when we head to Anchorage, our neighborhood is almost always the coldest place on the route - although if we drive toward the Mahoney neighborhood, its usually even colder that way.  There are a few places between here and Anchorage that compete with us, such as the Palmer Hay Flats. During a heat wave, we usually have the highest temperatures.

This morning, as we passed by Metro Cafe, the temperature had risen to - 15. As we neared downtown Wasilla, it fell to - 16 (all these numbers are F) but when we drove right downtown dropped to -18, which is what is was right here at this intersection as we prepared to turn into McDonald's to buy two Egg-McMuffin breakfasts.

The driver passing in front of me is not running a red light. I was stopped for a red light which turned green for me at the same moment I pushed the shutter. So the driver would have reached the intersection on a yellow light.

Here we are, crossing the Hay Flats, eating our egg McMuffins. The temperature is -25 F (-32 C). A few miles efore we reached here, we had passed through a warm pocket of -9 F (-23 C) air as we passed by the exit to Wal-Mart. 

From then on into Anchorage, the temperature varied between -18 and - 11 F, and when we reached Anchorage was -8, but fell to -11 when we pulled into Jacob and Lavina's neighborhood.

I dropped Margie off at the door and drove off to a meeting I had scheduled for 10 and so did not see Lynx until I returned about noon. He had been eating cereal and had saved a bit on his nose and face, just in case he got hungry later.

I was already hungry and wanted to take Margie and Lynx to lunch, but we did not have a car seat. So I called Lavina to see if I could switch cars with her for the lunch hour. She said okay and started her car right then so it could warm up a bit by the time I got there. 

When I got there, I gave her my keys and she gave me hers. Just about everybody around here has electronic keys now, unless the vehicle is old, but of course to drive you still have to put a real key in the ignition. I could see one key, so I put it in the ignition. I also accidently touched the brake with my foot, so the car turned off. I then tried to turn the key to reignite the engine, but the key would not turn. 

Nor would it come back out. I pulled and pulled but could not take it out. Lavina came back out and informed me the key I put in the ignition was not the car key. The car key was folded into the electronic door opener key. I had not seen it. She could not remove the other key, either.

So she called a locksmith, but the locksmith couldn't do it. So she called a tow truck to take the car to the Volvo dealer to see if they can fix it.

Damnit!

I did take Margie and Lynx to lunch, after we transfered Lynx's car seat from Lavina's car to the Escape.

I'll tell you, though, it is turning into one damned expensive Taco Bell lunch with a whole lot of inconvenience thrown in for Jacob and Lavina.

After lunch, I had to straighten out a misunderstanding on one of my 20 or so new medical bills I must pay out every month... Grrr.... I better be careful, or I will start slinging profanities all over the place - I am so... no, Bill, be careful! Don't start screaming and cursing now!

Anyway, I got it straightened out and then headed for home about 2:20 PM. I passed a student driver.

The coldest temperature I encountered on the drive home was, again, in the Hay Flats: -23 F (-31 C). It was -15 at Valley Regional Medical Center, where I made an emergency visit in late July to get some popped stitches from my surgery restitched but instead they gave me a CAT Scan, told me I needed a third emergency surgery immediately, tried to get me to let them set it up that evening in their hospital with a valley doctor but I refused and went back to Alaska Regional in Anchorage so that the surgery could be done where the first two had been taken place, but, thank goodness, the doctor there decided to put me on antibiotics and observe me, and I did not need the expense and further physical trauma of that surgery after all.

What I have learned is that modern medicine is a f... mess! There, you see! I'm starting to curse! I just can't talk about this situation long before I start to curse. Anyway, I owe Valley Regional a lot of money in addition to all the other money I owe so many other medical entities, so I stopped to deal with that, too.

Anyway, here I am, back in downtown Wasilla, where it was, I can't remember: -17, -15, or -14.

Here I am, headed toward Metro Cafe.

Here I am at Metro Cafe, where the temperature is - 12 F (-24 C). Poor Kristina and Shoshona. They have to keep opening the window so they can serve coffee to people like me.

Even so, they are disappointed when I tell them it is - 12. "Is that all?" one of them asks. ""It was -25 earlier."

And here is the moon, on the backside of Metro Cafe as I complete the drive-through.

And here I am, a few minutes later, approaching my house at 3:50 PM. As you can see, it is -22 (-30 C). The temperature has risen one full degree since Margie and I left for Anchorage in the morning.

And remember - compared to the cold places in Alaska, this is warm. In the cold places, today's highs were in the mid -40's, maybe a few even in the -50's. It wouldn't surprise me at all to hear it got into the -60's here and there. These are real temperatures, not wind chills. You can turn your back on a windchill; you can step around a corner, hide behind a wind break, put on a windbreaker. You can't do that in a real temperature.

But even at 60 below, if you are dressed warm and you are physically active, you can overheat yourself. You can sweat, soak your clothes.

That's when you get into trouble.

Comments

[Michael Kircher]

I have never experienced -20 much less -60 before. Oddly, I would like to, though. Maybe a trip to Wasilla is the ticket? ;^}

Love the school bus photo. You can just feel it! And how can you not love a cute kid with staticy hair and snotty nose?

Cheers.

[Daisy]

Just thinking about working that drive-through window in temperatures like that is making me shiver! Here I tend to consider temperatures in the teens (or windchills below zero) to be unreasonably cold (which doesn't stop there from being weeks of it in January and February. Maybe I should move someplace warmer!) and if there are more than a few days here and there of single-digit temperatures it's a particularly cold winter. It's in the 40s outside now and I'm trying to enjoy it while it lasts.