Journey To The Center  

This isn’t the post I was going to put up today, but it seemed timely, so it goes up first. I’ll try to get another up before I get back on the road tomorrow.

Yesterday, while traveling between Twin Falls, Idaho, and Baker City, Oregon, I was passed by a *dumb ass* in a pick-up truck carrying a snowmobile and a very filthy ATV — one that had (quite obviously) been crawling around in a mucky place. The truck was speeding by in the fast lane. I noticed it because the snowmobile seemed to be poorly loaded — tipped up at a crazy angle, was bumping around, and looked as though it wouldn’t take much to have it flip back over.

While I was contemplating the crappy job of loading the truck, a huge chunk of dried mud, perhaps the size of a large bowling ball, broke free of the underside of the ATV and flew up and hit the hood of my van. It made quite a mess of the hood — put a big “rock-sized” dent in the hood right above the grille. I haven’t tried opening the hood since the accident as it might not be possible to close it again after.

I guess the one bright spot in all of this is that the dumb-ass-teroid missed hitting the windshield. If it had, I have a pretty good idea of what might have happened. Most likely I wouldn’t be sitting here typing out this post.
[EDIT:: After I got home and was able to open the hood, I discovered that the rad support was all smashed as well. Fortunately, the radiator wasn’t damaged or I would have been left walking home from Idaho.]

Quite apart from the obvious safety hazard and peril that a mud-caked ATV poses to the public, it should be remembered that the dried mud can also carry huge numbers of seeds from invasive plants. Shortly after I was bombarded by the giant mud ball, I noticed a road sign instructing ATVers not to spread invasive seeds around on their tires. Would anyone like to hazard a guess at how plant seeds were imbedded in the dumb-ass-teroid that smashed into my van hood? Ahem.

Well, back to our regularly scheduled blog post.