Jake in U.P. and Dad S. Visit

This last week Jake had a business trip up in the U.P. (aka Upper Peninsula of Michigan)  (aka basically Canada).  The last time Jake had been in the U.P. was during his mission, but this time was completely different.  There were about 25 people from the Ford Brake Engineering group that met up at a Continental (a supplier)'s winter test facility.  This is Jake's summary...

We drove up on Wednesday and arrived in Sault St. Marie around 2:30pm. The 4-5 hour drive wasn't too bad since we were rocking a company Lincoln - which included seat massagers! I dropped off my buddy and went searching for my hotel. Unfortunately, our car’s navigation was turned off and I had no cell service to look up the address on my phone. Fortunately, it was a very small town, so after a half hour of driving around I came upon the Holiday Inn Express where I had booked a reservation. I got up to my room and realized they gave me the honeymoon suite! In addition to the regular tub in the bathroom I had a Jacuzzi next to my king size bed. It was awesome and that night after dinner and watching my coworkers play hockey at the local ice rink I went home and watched some TV while soaking in the hot tub.

The next day we drove about 15 miles out of town to Continental’s test grounds. We were testing their ABS, Traction Control, Roll Stability Control, Electronic Stability Control. Basically, this meant jumping in a lot of different cars and driving them on different surfaces. To test their Traction Control I took each vehicle to a hill with a 20% grade. The left side of the hill was covered in smooth ice and the right side was bare concrete. I drove up the hill with my left tires on the ice and my right tires on the concrete. Then I stopped the car completely and started again to proceed up the hill. The traction control applies brakes to the wheels on the ice, which transfers engine power to the tires with grip. It was neat to see how well it worked.

They also had huge fields of ice where I was able to see how well the systems worked compared to when they’re turned off. Some vehicle did better than others and it really came down to the quality of tires they used. Next to the ice fields they had a big field of packed snow. I was told to get the vehicle up to ~60 mph and try to spin it out. With the stability control on I couldn't get it out of control. With the system off any little change in steering would cause the vehicle to go spinning in 360 degrees, which was kind of scary.  And fun!

The best part of the testing was when I got to take the cars out on their handling track. It was a 1 mile track with lots of twists and turns that was completely covered in snow. I was told to floor the throttle and not touch the brakes as I went through the course. All the systems working together would detect when I was about to crash and work the brakes and accelerator automatically to the best positions according to where I aimed the wheel to get me where I wanted to go. I really couldn't believe how well it worked! 

We drove home Friday morning. We were really worried about getting trapped in the U.P., because there was a big, impending storm heading our way. Luckily we got past the Mackinac Bridge before they closed it down for winds. (The Mackinac Bridge is the longest suspension bridge in the Western Hemisphere and a few years back the winds were so bad that an unlucky guy in a Yugo got blown right off!) The storm still hit us pretty hard. Some places had whiteout conditions and the road had plenty of ice. Luckily my buddy was driving cause he used to do all sorts of ice and rally racing. We almost ended up in the median once, but he saved the car and went home without incident.

A few weeks ago I casually mentioned to my folks that I was going to be alone with the girls for a few days (in my most pathetic voice) and my dad came to my rescue!  He flew in on Sunday then drove to Canada on Monday for a few days of work.  But he came back to our house on Wednesday, a few hours after Jake left, and stayed til Friday.  It was so fun just to hang out with my dad!  We went to the mall, to Sam's club, got snowed in, relaxed on the couch, watched Sherlock, ate out, and played with babies.  He took such good care of me.  I was taking large amounts of Benadryl (for my hives) so I was groggy and tired.  He woke up with the girls in the morning, changed them, fed them, and played with them so I could sleep in!!!  AMAZING!  Thanks for coming to my rescue daddy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!