Well...let's start with "it snowed in gatlinburg this weekend"

We were there recruiting for CSF. So we (the college student portion of our group) are all planing on coming back on saturday night. And it's snowing, but it's not that bad, it's not on the roads in town. So we know that we have to find a new way home because they close the road over the big mountains when it snows. I suggest the big flat road through pigeon forge. Very safe. My campus minister, who grew up in tennessee, suggests 321. It's a road that makes the drive much shorter. So we decide that we'll take danny's suggestion to go on 321. It's a little hillier, but not normally a bad road. So it's about 11 at night. There are three cars. An suv with four of our boys in it. Danny, Justin and Kari in another car, and me mooch and staci in my volvo. So mooch and i have to go pick up staci at another hotel than ours. So the boys get on the road, about ten minutes later they're followed by danny. It took us 30 minutes to get to the end of gatlinburg and back to get staci. So we were last. We take 321. It seems fine. A little snow is starting to stick on the road, but not enough to worry. Just gotta take it slow. So we come around this corner at the top of a hill, about 15 minutes outside of gatlinburg. It's a curve down a hill. All of a sudden, the roads have a lot more snow on them. We hit a spot and we start sliding. (by the way, i'm not driving because i trust mooch with my life and asked him to drive). So i realize that we're sliding and thankfully (albeit scarily) toward the ditch. As we hit the ditch, mooch manages to stop us. I look behind us in time to see a jeep fishtailing down the road past us. So we get out, mooch and i, cause staci wasn't driving and doesn't own the car, so has no need to get out. One of our wheels is hanging above the ditch, 2 rear on the road, front left barely on the edge of the ditch. Mooch decides that we need to at least try to back out... So i get in the driver's side and try to reverse it while he pushes from the front. I was so stinking scared i was gonna kill mooch and deprive the world of his presence. Anyway, we moved back a little bit, but we kept moving forward as soon as i'd stop, so we quit trying that. (i learned that i have rear wheel drive, as the front right wasn't turning at all). One guy pulls up and asks if we're okay, at this point, i'm pleading with my mother's voicemail to answer the dadblamed phone, staci is trying to find my aaa card and mooch is yelling at our campus minister on the phone. See, it turns out, the first car out had tried the road and had turned back and called to warn danny. Nobody had remembered to call us. Mooch was very angry. Let me just interject that it was in no way any of their faults. By this time, my guardian angel mountain men have pulled up in their trucks and have come over to offer help. One of them has a rope and hook and hooks my back end to another nice person's car and they pull my car out. So they pull us out and i turn the car around in the lot across the street. I pull it to where it won't slide back when we start again and i talk to the nice men who say we should probably keep going forward even though the roads get worse. We decided to go back instead. We start out in low gear and (mooch, my hero, at the wheel) start driving slowly back toward gatlinburg. So, we start back and i get on the phone with my mom, who finally answered my calls. We are thoroughly afraid to keep going, cause the roads are already worse than they were before the whole 20 minute fiasco. I tell my mom the story and eventually she lets me know that my sister's group has an extra hotel room, so we decide that if we can, we'll be heading back and staying with them. Then we start talking about if the roads get much worse having to pull off and stop for the night (we only had 3 blankets). And it was still snowing. I manage to make an actual decision and decide to keep going (very slowly of course). I then call danny and tell him we're alive and staying in gatlinburg. I've never been so happy to see the stupid place. It took us twice as long to get back (or at least it felt like it) as it did to get out to the ditch cause the roads were so much worse. We got back and stayed with my mom and sister's group. We got up this morning, decided to wait until the parking lot had thawed before we left. So we started out at 11. So we get on the road and i'm driving because i've been reassured that the road through pigeon forge (the one i originally wanted to take) is clear as can be. We get going and the traffic is horrendous. We had to literally cross the entire city of gatlinburg cause my gas station is on one end and the road we needed was on the other end. So it took 2 hours to get from one end of gatlinburg to the other end of pigeon forge. In case you didn't know, that is not a long distance. So then we get on i-40 up past sevierville. We stop to eat and get back on the road in johnson city. I look down and notice that my temp gauge is above the halfway point. My car runs at about 1/4 level on the temp gauge. Very cold. We watch the gauge, and just over the nc border it spikes to just under the red zone. It drops down a bit, but still really scary, so we stop at the welcome center. I of course call my daddy, as we've already determined that there is coolant in the car too. He tells me to go on and stop in asheville to put water in and to watch the thing. After we start out, it rides at just under red all the way there, except when it dips and rises again. I was only going 60 for that entire part. We hit asheville and put in water and wait for a while. We also determine that there is enough oil in the car too so we don’t know what is wrong. My dad said to wait to see if the water level changed after a while. It didn't, so we took off. It dropped down to just at half on the temp gauge, so we kept going. Just as we got on 26/25, it spiked again. I called my daddy for like the 6th time and told him, so he made me stop at my house in greenville so he could look at it. He decided that there was very little water in the radiator, so he hosed down the radiator and the engine and sent us on our way. We take off and the temp gauge starts at just above half, then drops down to where it normally runs. We got back and i dropped mooch at his house, then took staci to her car. When i left staci, the temp gauge all of a sudden rose up to where it had been floating, just below there. I got home and i am not driving again for a while.

It took 7 hours to get back. It shouldn't have.

Did I mention the evacuation of the convention center?

Ode to Mooch

An Ode to Mooch (upon his request for a new post):

Oh Mooch with hair so wild
Like Bozo the clown, an afro.
When angered, he is,
You may see him move,
Throwing things wildly,
Both battery powered and wired.
He could make a career
Out of watching Seinfeld,
Playing golf and eating totinos.
West Virginia and all things Pittsburg
are what make his world go round.
Livin' on a prayer,
He gives love a bad name.
His memory is brought to mind
When ever I hear someone say,
"Hey dad, wanna have a catch?"