Sunday, April 20, 2008

Rain + Dirt = MUD

Michelle had a PC party in a town down by the Mississippi river yesterday and got Mapquest directions to get there. As part of the directions, she was to go 0.7 mile on a dirt road. Now, normally, that isn't a problem but it rained all day Friday and part of Saturday. I am not sure what she was thinking (she isn't sure either - she was just following directions) but she turned down the road and made it about a 1/4 mile before the car suddenly slipped to the side of the road and sunk into about a foot into the soft sludge. I got a phone call from a very worried/frantic wife. The first thing I heard was, "I knew I shouldn't have turned down this road but the directions said I should." She called her host to let her know she was stuck. It turns out the Mapquest directions were completely wrong anyway - Michelle was 15 miles out of the way. Michelle ended up calling a tow truck which also got stuck. The tow truck driver called for another tow truck. This was one of those trucks used to pull Semi trucks out of ditches. He also nearly got stuck. Both drivers were amazed that Michelle made it as far down the road as she did. She finally got out of the tar that Iowans call mud but never made it to her party. Her host (who Michelle had never met) thought the situation was so funny that she asked Michelle if they could reschedule the party. What a day she had.

7 comments:

Jess and Jen said...

Poor Michelle! Sounds like a frustrating situation. Did you have to give the car a good wash to get all the mud off?

Jen

Michelle said...

After the incident I pulled to the side of the road to scrape out some mud from around the wheels because the car wasn't driving right. As soon as I arrived home we washed the car with the hose, but the pressure still wasn't high enough to get the clay out, so we went to a local car wash where you could wash the car yourself with high powered sprayers and worked on the car for almost 10 minutes spraying up inside the wheels and mud was just pouring out for a long time. Even after that I'm sure there's still mud in there. I had mud up to half of the wheels on the right side of my car.

I couldn't believe how stuck I was, I just kept sinking in the mud. It took the tow trucks 2 hours to pull me out. I took pictures of the road where my car was stuck with my cell phone, but not sure how to get those pictures on this blog.

Moral of the story, if it's been raining avoid dirt roads, they are messy and the mud is really deep.

Good things about this were:
1. My host was understanding why I wasn't there.
2. It was daylight so I was found easily
3. It wasn't raining or it would have been even harder to pull my car out of the side of the road.

chelsey said...

How awful! I would've panicked! Hopefully you'll get a good 2nd party out of it all!

Jess and Jen said...

I just have to mention this because when I read that she was 15 miles out of the way, the first thing I thought of was this: http://mcclarkies.blogspot.com/2007/09/im-ditz.html

Maybe it's time to start using Google Maps!

Glad you and your car survived.

Jess and Jen said...

http://mcclarkies.blogspot.com/2007/09/im-ditz.html

Jason said...

The funny thing about that, Jess, is that she was traveling to the same town. I also much prefer Google maps to MapQuest.

Michelle said...

Ok, I know, same city, lost again, but I really wasn't lost, or so I thought. I was following the directions and I was on the South end of town and she lived on the North end, Mapquest was giving me a shorter route (although that route is closed during bad weather) and the last time that I was officially lost I didn't have directions with me which is why I got lost. I need a GPS, anyone want to get me that for Christmas?