It was Global Warming I tell 'ya...

From the Fairbanks News-Miner: bq. Driver plunges into icy Chena All Earl Voorhis wanted was something to eat. bq. A little more than halfway through the Friday lunch hour, Voorhis drove to one restaurant, but found it was closed. bq. So he decided to take a shortcut across the Chena River to the Princess Hotel, or maybe Pike's Landing. bq. About 20 feet onto the ice, Voorhis' 1994 Ford F-350 pickup broke through and sank up to its headlights in the Chena. bq. He wasn't hurt and was able to scramble onto the roof of his truck cab, walk across the truck's hood, hop off, cross the ice and walk up the snow-covered riverbank to the Princess Hotel, where he reported the incident at about 12:45 p.m. Friday. bq. "I saw the tracks from the other traffic," the 52-year-old said. "I thought it was solid." And recovering the truck? bq. Dan Kraykowski, Ben's Auto owner, who charges by the hour, said he didn't yet know what the bill would be. bq. "It ain't going to be cheap," Kraykowski said. The 'official' commentary? bq. The Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities does not recommend that motorists cross the Chena River. bq. "The ice crossings are not maintained nor are they plowed by the state," said DOT spokeswoman Shannon McCarthy. "It's inherently dangerous." DOH! My Mom's side of the family came from Erie, Pennsylvania. When I was growing up, people there used to drive across Lake Erie into Canada all the time but it stopped freezing solidly enough to do this around 1955 or 1960. Global Warming or just a general 400-year cycle... I just Googled to see if there was any anecdotal record of this and came up with an excellent one. Rick Danko, one of the founding members of The Band passed away in 1999 (born in 1942). His Obituary is here and well worth a read if you are into this groups music. The line that stood out was this one: bq. The son of a woodcutter and the third of four brothers, Danko was born on December 29th, 1942, in Simcoe, a town in rural southern Ontario. "He would tell me that in the kind of neighborhood he grew up in, the typical house would be back from the road, and you would just see a bare bulb inside a room with no curtains," says Andersen, who was raised on the opposite side of Lake Erie, in Buffalo, New York. "Their idea of fun would be driving across Lake Erie when it was frozen, spinning fishtails on the lake." A couple hundred years ago, the great rivers in Europe were freezing over. and around 900AD, wine grapes were growing in Greenland.