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sgtdub: January 2010

Sunday, January 31, 2010

31 January, 2010,
I must say I enjoy the winter snow storms much more when I'm at home with the family. For fear of sounding like my last post, I can't remember the last time we had two significant snow storms in the same season. After a 1/2" of ice we received 5" of snow.
The Oklahoma National Guard has announced we are yet again in the window of another deployment. My travel agent has no imagination whatsoever, and I'm looking at going back to my second home, Afghanistan. Now of course, nothing is set in stone and we are simply preparing as if....... ( for those who are easily fooled....)
We are headed into town to have dinner with Mrs. Dub's parents so be safe and have a great day.

Friday, January 01, 2010

01 Jan 2010,
Happy New Year!

Well, I must say the last week of 2009 was certainly interesting. Mrs. Dub thought we should all post our experience on Christmas Eve in the family. At the police department I had to work Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, don't ask why, it's not worth saying. Anyway, as with every other Christmas I wanted a white one. Boy did I get it. Because the weather was suppose to get worse on Christmas Eve I took Mrs. Dub to work that morning. She called me at noon to say they had released everyone for the holiday and the bad weather. By 10 am it had begun snowing sideways with wind gusts up to 60 mph. I picked Mrs. Dub up from work and she rode with me the remainder of my shift. Since it was the holiday we were suppose to be able to come in as soon as the next shift broke out of line up. The snow got so bad that the next shift got snowed in the parking lot at the station and we were told not to come in. This was fine since I my self was stuck in a snow drift in the McDonald's parking lot and had been there for an hour and a half. Over the course of 4 hours in this one drift I managed to move my vehicle in a half circle and finally found myself up against the curb of the drive thru window. I finally found some traction and slowly made my way thru the drive backwards. This was working until I backed into the next snow drift which was much deeper and it was there we stayed until the wrecker finally made it to us. After two pulls through the snow I made it to the main street where we headed for the highway. At least up there the plows should have been working. We got on the highway and drove a half mile before a semi truck and trailer, a pickup, a Toyota corolla and a suv had the entire width of the highway blocked. I parked far enough away to avoid getting stuck again and walked up to the vehicles. I finally managed to get two of the vehicles moved and advised the semi and the pickup that wreckers and sand trucks were on their way. They were only a hundred yards away from gas stations if things got worse and there was no need for me to stay any longer with them. It was already 630 pm and we were going to leave at 4. I made my way around them and drove another half mile when we found the 50-75 car pile up. I didn't get close because I didn't want to get caught in the middle of this. There was no way for me to make my way to the front to determine what was wrong so I turned around on the highway and with lights going drove the wrong way back to the next exit and got off. We finally made our way to the location of two other officers who had abandoned their vehicle and walked almost a mile to a gas station. I picked up one that lived out in the same direction as us and made our way to his house. 20 miles later we dropped him off at his house and we started winding our way out of his neighborhood when we hit our 4th drift of the day and was stuck for another 2 hours while waiting for a wrecker. It was now 10 pm on Christmas Eve and Mrs. Dub and I were in a police car trying to get home. Ms. Dub had been home alone since 7am. We were able to get within 3 miles before it was no longer possible to go any further. With 6'-7' snow drifts covering the last 2 lane highway to our house we weren't going home and Ms. Dub was spending Christmas Eve home alone. We had to turn around and found a friend's house who put us up for the night. Mrs. Dub cried, I was just too exhausted. I got about 3 hours of sleep before I had to start all over again on Christmas Day. Mrs. Dub stayed there while I went to work. I ended up getting stuck in a snow drift again for about an hour that morning. If there had been a dealership open I would have traded in the Ford Crown Victoria for a 4 wheel drive. It was worthless in these weather conditions. Mrs. Dub finally made it home around noon and had a short walk to complete the trip. I made it home after work around 5 pm.

In other news, the Oklahoma National Guard announced once again that we were being considered for another deployment in support of OEF, possibly meaning Afghanistan sometime around May of 2011. Let the games begin.