The Barometer Online

December 28th, 2007

Roadtrip ready

Flags. There were lots and lots of flags. Bowl-goers flew their colors proud as the OSU Student Media van progressed on our journey to San Francisco, Calif. for the Emerald Bowl.

The Barometer/Student Media roadtrip started early Wednesday morning when Beaver Yearbook Photo Editor Toan Ngo and I hopped into an OSU Motorpool van will all-weather tires. Before popping it into drive, I checked for tire chains.

We met just after 7 a.m. and actually hit the road at 7:30. You can blame me for holding up the bandwagon because I had to grab more camera gear.

Ngo, Barometer Sports Editor Sean McLean, Barometer Football Beat Writer Kye Johnson, KBVR FM Sportscaster Chris Edmonds and I loaded the van and trucked down to California.

The drive through Eugene and down to Medford was highly uneventful but the snowpack took a turn for the worst when we hit the second cutoff for Kalamath Falls. The mandatory chain-up zone had us stopping and digging out the tire chains.

They were located in the side compartment of the back of the van. Apparently, they are standard equipment for the OSU Motorpool vans. 

A quick round of “anybody ever put chains on before?” identified me as the prime, and most experienced canididate for chain implementation. About ten minutes of laying on pavement and strapping rubber tensioners to the chains had us on our way again - at the breakneck pace of 30 miles per hour.

After about 20 miles of pass travel, we heard a louder-than-usual “kerchunk.” It was the result of wearing through our chains and breaking one of the metal teeth in their first use. After driving like that for a while, for fear of snow travel without chains, we finally gave in and pulled over to remove the chains.

Don’t worry, OSU Motorpool, we will be purchasing new chains for the trip back.

The rest of the trip was highly uneventfuly, even when we stopped at a rest stop along the way. Our cruise into San Francisco was peppered with Sean’s inability to stay in his own lane. He hit rumble strips and lane markers affectively scaring the San Fran drivers. Which is pretty hard to do, I might add. 

Toan and I tried snapping photos of all the bridges and pretty buildings on our way in.

We’ve arrived in San Francisco and tomorrow the Bowl Madness will begin.

Cheers,

Lauren L. Dillard

Editor in Chief/The Daily Barometer

 

This entry was posted on Friday, December 28th, 2007 at 3:52 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

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