"Washboard" logging roads...

[Billy_Bob]

In the hills and mountains around here (Oregon), there are hundreds of logging and Forest Service roads. They are a combination of dirt, gravel, and pot holes (mud holes in winter/spring).

On portions of these roads, where there is a steep incline, there are "ripples" in the road. I call them "washboards". When I drive my unloaded pick-up over these sections, the rear end bounces and fishtails to the left or right if I'm going a little fast (like 25 mph).

Anyway as I'm driving over these sections and being bounced all over the place inside my truck, I think of that song... Shake me to the left, shake me to the right....

 

[jimmyq]

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[Sizzle-Chest]

A few years ago, I was with some guys heading up a steep logging road with quite a bit of washboard. Well, I was in my buddies truck and I had his loaded 30-06 in one hand and a beer in the other and he was taking the turns pretty fast, too fast for my comfort. We would come up to a turn and hit that washboard going around and I could feel us slide to the side of the road, but he was always able to whip it straight again. Now, let me tell you that this weren't no flatland logging road. We were high in the cascades and the sides of that road were cliffside clearcuts and 5 year old reprod. Going off the side meant dying, so I was a bit worried, but I tried to play it cool. Well, we came around one particular turn, and it was only a matter of time really, when another truck came up the other way. So my friend swung his truck wide around the turn to miss the other vehicle. The back end fish-tailed bad and he overcorrected so that we headed straight off the side! I thought we were gonners for sure, but we were saved when the front end of his truck wrapped around a second growth fir tree!!! We hit it so hard that the truck got wedged in so that we didn't roll. It looked like the truck was hugging the tree for dear life. Othewise, we were completely sideways, and my beer was comming out the top of the can! I had to crawl out his side cuz my door wouldnt open, and we found the whole front end crushed in. And the tree . . . the tree was in pretty bad shape. We got some other trucks and haywire to rig it up my buddies wreck. Then we had to fall the tree just to get the truck back up to the road.