Too bad the breastle was just a spelling mistake; I thought it was unusually poetic; and-or a description of being buzzed.
Long term parking near nycOnce upon a time, a man walked into the biggest bank he could find in NYC and asked for a $2,000 loan. The loan officer asked what he had as collateral, and the man...
Anyway, strong winds and storms of various kinds certainly do afflict Texas. Usually the high steady winds come from winter storm fronts or from a spring climate phenomenon (should be ending now). That happens worst on the high plains (you heard about the time out west of Amarillo when all the cows fell over because the wind STOPPED blowing) and the desert areas of the southwest.
However, sudden dust storms can happen in a variety of places. A certain spot on I-40 just west of Grants, NM had a couple of bad ones last year... attributed to a surprisingly small field of bare dirt near the road, combined with strong winds. There's also a stretch of I-10 in western NM that gets bad ones. Some places on I-5 in the San Joaquin Valley of California are notorious for them as well. And a windstorm could happen anywhere when conditions are right. You have to be ready.
Besides, "Oooo-kla-homa, where the wind just sort of blows gently around, more of a light breeze really" would be all out of sync with the music.
People can and do pull trailers in the areas where you're going -- I've done it myself a number of times, some of them in a strong or fickle wind. Rather than enumerate all the places that are provided with an old-fashioned airport wind sock and a sign that warns high-profile vehicles to slow down, I'll just give some general advice:
1. Load your trailer properly -- with the right amount of weight bias toward the hitch, and the center of gravity down low. I've seen people come close to flipping a trailer, or unable to keep it in just one lane, just because of bad vehicle dynamics -- no particular help from the wind.
Make sure the load isn't going to move around inside the trailer, too. Even if you don't wreck when a load shifts, you could get where you're going, open it up, and find that some of your possessions are in more and smaller pieces than you had in mind.
2. A big heavy trailer can push around a light, short-wheelbase tow vehicle something awful, especially if you were going too fast to start with. This is one area where a ponderous SUV or pickup truck really shines.
3. Drive slower. Everything bad that happens with a trailer happens harder with less time to recover at high speeds. Give yourself a chance to feel out a comfort zone for both the dynamics of your rig and the power curve of your engine, with a safety cushion. This makes your car last longer too.
4. Many people intuitively think that when a trailer starts to misbehave, they should speed up and somehow straighten things out in that fashion. This is exactly wrong -- it tends to make things worse. Slowing down (without hard braking unless circumstances compel it) is the thing to do.
5. Cultivate the habit of staying even further ahead of the car than usual -- in particular, so that circumstances *don't* compel hard braking or maneuvering from highway speed. Even the much reduced definition of "highway speed" that's appropriate to driving a smallish car with a trailer on.
6. Allow yourself schedule flexibility. If the weatherman says Arizona is going to fly through on Tuesday en route to Arkansas, delay your trip until Wednesday.
Here is some good towing advice:
Cheers, --Joe
