High winds - I-80 vs I-70?

I wish to understand how well or badly this trip went. Ive been having second thoughts about my waiting/Cheyenne strategy all night yesterday. 70 would have been attractive due to a apparent lack of weather, but you cannot trust 70 at all, it can flip in a heartbeat.

This storm system is still developing nicely east of Cheyenne.

A little history, a railroad survey team had orders to find a spot for the next "Major" terminal/shops potential HQ area for a new railroad about 1867's or so. This team was lead by a General, and they did well to make it as far as they did in a storm on horseback. Finally one of them tossed a tomahawk into the ground and declared this is here Cheyenne. Let's make camp we are here as the story is told to me anyhow.

12000 pounds is light. Ive always loved to be heavy, the moar the bettah... moar please. I went by the handle Oliver once for a few months at a small outfit decades ago. Because I was never happy with what I was given. (HA....) what do you prefer to call me? Heavy on the mound of overweight tickets or Oliver?

 

Steamboat is beyond westbound the Eisenhower tunnel. Be set up for a steepish downgrade coming out of there. Then you have canyons such as Storm king I believe which are walls which will concentrate and funnel winds against you.

An interesting thing about Eisenhower, there are about 900 feet of jointage inside the walls, you can id them via the hexagonal construction. You are actually crossing a relatively major earthquake fault inside that tunnel and those joints are there to slide enough (Hopefully) to keep it open long enough for people to get out.

Enjoy

 

They had plans for that years ago, but the environmentalists did away with that, now hey looking at that river and boring a hole to divert it. They could put all the trucks in the tunnel and let all the stoned skiers have that road. Then they going to drop 70 thru part of Denver below grade, right in that part that floods....super slab...what happened?

 

That would have been something else indeed.

I think the Gothard (Spelling?) in Switzerland where they load 18 wheelers with hazmat onto railroad cars to take through the tunnel both ways is pending to be the longest and safest tunnel. In that facility are so called life boats able to take a certain number of refugees seeking protection from smoke, fire etc.

The one tunnel I have always had fun with is the old I-895 Fort McHenry tunnel, in Baltimore (Not the new I-95 one) the tubes are steel within a enclosed hollow cassions sunk into the bay and drained. When you toss the jake brakes on turned up high, the roar not only echoes in the tubes but also shakes the cassions inside the bottom of the sea that you are running through.

As a side note for amusement, there is a river not too far from the Bay in which Indians tried to think about a explosive crop...

http://mht.maryland.gov/historicalmarkers/Images/photos/BA/RM-117.jpg

 

I just made it to Rawlins. Lightly loaded.
Took 30 around from Laramie to Walcott, just in case. Uneventful.

I had more problems in Nebraska today than I did in Wyo.

What helped was it was nearly a true west wind. Dead in the face.
4.5mpg running 55 and trying... but the rollover risk is lessened in contrast compared to a northerly crosswind.

 

Yea those never ending west winds in the face makes for a exercise in endurance. There were times Ive gotten dry on fuel (Not necessarily running out mind you but low enough to start counting how many hours I might still keep moving... using the good old stick measuring..) it is one of my buttons so to speak until cruise control as a luxury item in big trucks became common.

 

Time to put that bit#@ in the wind and get that freight delivered.