Donuts in Texas

[Aquineas]

So early Monday morning after a nighttime snowfall that left about 6 inches of snow on the ground (this after days upon days of freezing rain), I decided to test the roads with my AWD G70 to see firsthand how treacherous they were. My wife had an event that she was looking forward to attending later on that day, and I was concerned what kind of conditions she'd run in to. I was not optimistic because my driveway was black-ice the day before, but my (mostly correct) thinking was the snow on top of the ice would at least provide more traction than the ice alone. I grew up in Chicago and Iowa, and lived in Toronto earlier in my adult life, so I probably have slightly more experience driving in the snow than some of my fellow Texans, but I'm not ready to go trekking across the Yukon or anything like that. In general, I like cold weather for the few brief moments I'm exposed to it only because I know I'm about to be back in the warmth soon after .

Note my Genesis is an AWD 3.3T, and our family-hauler is Expedition Max 4WD with new tires on it: the OEM Hankook tires on our Expedition were horrible. My feeling was, "I'll probably see the worst of the roads, but if my car can get through it, she will have no problems"- a hypothesis which proved to be both correct and incorrect- more on that in a moment. So I took out the G70 on completely unshovelled (and at that point, nearly pristine snow) roads and headed to my favorite store in the world, Sam's Club (hey, we're a family of six, so Sam's Club is our friend). I knew that they wouldn't be open, but I chose it because I knew driving there, I'd encounter a good mix of highway and side-roads to assess the driving conditions. It was funny watching all the Jeep Wranglers that were out and about- days like they've been the last week are like the Olympics for Jeep owners , and probably 1/3 the cars I saw early on were Jeep Wranglers, out in full-force basically getting the most out of their very extremely capable 4WD systems.

I received a couple of curious side-glances as I was plodding through the unploughed snow right along side them with unequal aplomb; certainly not as capable as they were, but I wasn't getting stuck, either. I even tackled a small hill without any problems whatsoever. The only dodgy event that I experienced was when hit a rut of snow that caught the passenger side of my car on the "expressway", and that certainly did everything possible to induce torque (as in the flat-spin variety). It was controllable though and I was able to steer out of it before it caught-hold. In summary, I have zero regrets whatsoever about buying an AWD G70 despite living in the frozen tundra Texas.

I pulled up to a nearly empty Sam's Club parking lot with very little signs of life inside the store. There were a couple of cars in the side parking lot, but absolutely none in the main. You know what that means, right?? Doughnuts!! Donuts even!! I did something I've not done in at least twenty years since I lived in Toronto; did donuts in my car! Now granted I only did a few, but it sure was fun. The car was pretty predictable, all things considered (I didn't bother disabling traction control or anything like that- in fact I'm not even sure how to do that lol).

In any event, I finally parked and walked up to the Sam's club door just after 8:00am (I have one of those "Club" level memberships that lets me in slightly earlier than the store opens for the general public). The door didn't automatically open, but after about a minute or so a guy emerges and manually unlocks the door, absolutely astonished that anyone actually made it to the store.

"Hi, are you open? I have a club level membership." I asked, as I simultaneously showed him my membership card.
"Uh, well we certainly won't turn away any customers. Do you know what you're getting? You'll have to self-checkout!"
"Yes I know exactly what I'm getting. No problem on the self-checkout."- something I absolutely loathe normally, but wasn't going to complain about then.

So I was the only customer in the store. The bonus in all this? Not only did they have a huge stack of Clorox Wipes in stock (they haven't had those regularly in nearly a year), but they had Member's Mark paper towels and facial tissues as well.

My wife did make it out of the house later and had a different experience though. By the time she made it out there was a lot more traffic, and while the Expedition had no problems (just switch the selector to 'snow' mode), there were a lot more people getting stuck, blocking traffic, etc, and her experience was a lot more stressful.

 

[joschneider]

Man I miss doing donuts in empty snowy parking lots, a definite minus to moving to a desert environment.

So just having it in sport mode (im assuming) let you do donuts without disabling the TC & SC?

Just so you know, the button is down there by the shifter. Press once for TC off, press and hold for full off. I need full off to do donuts in the dry here

 

[Aquineas]

Man I miss doing donuts in empty snowy parking lots, a definite minus to moving to a desert environment.

So just having it in sport mode (im assuming) let you do donuts without disabling the TC & SC?

Just so you know, the button is down there by the shifter. Press once for TC off, press and hold for full off. I need full off to do donuts in the dry here

I actually didn't think to move into Sport Mode. Dang, not sure why that didn't cross my mind, but it didn't. Grr at myself. But yeah the car doesn't really have much say in it when there's snow on top of what could be black ice. Enough yaw steering input and it's going to rotate whether it wants to or not lol.

 

[jimmy buoy]

In our "police state" of Ontario Canada, we've had cops charge individuals with "stunt driving" after seeing them do "donuts" in parking lots. Ridiculous. When charged with stunt driving it's a BIG DEAL...

Stunt driving in Ontario faces minimum penalties for a first-time offender of $2,000 but can rise to $10,000. But it doesn't stop there. You could face up to 6 months in jail and receive a 2-year license suspension.

They immediate suspend the driver's licence for 7 days - PLUS tow your car away on a flatbed truck to their impound lot (at your expense).

Of course, this is yet another method to keep us all "safe" from ourselves. How sad eh?

More details...

Have You Been Charged With Stunt Driving Ontario?

If you've been charged with stunt driving Ontario, you need to contact The Traffic Lawyers. Schedule a free consultation and receive a free quote.

thetrafficlawyers.ca

 

[Beefer]

Yeah...OPP are a bunch of idiots. Not all of course.

 

[joschneider]

Yeah...OOP are a bunch of idiots. Not all of course.

OOP?

 

[Beefer]

OOP?

Sorry...OPP. Ontario Provincial Police.

 

[EdP]

In our "police state" of Ontario Canada, we've had cops charge individuals with "stunt driving" after seeing them do "donuts" in parking lots. Ridiculous. When charged with stunt driving it's a BIG DEAL...

Stunt driving in Ontario faces minimum penalties for a first-time offender of $2,000 but can rise to $10,000. But it doesn't stop there. You could face up to 6 months in jail and receive a 2-year license suspension.

They immediate suspend the driver's licence for 7 days - PLUS tow your car away on a flatbed truck to their impound lot (at your expense).

Of course, this is yet another method to keep us all "safe" from ourselves. How sad eh?

More details...

Have You Been Charged With Stunt Driving Ontario?

If you've been charged with stunt driving Ontario, you need to contact The Traffic Lawyers. Schedule a free consultation and receive a free quote.

thetrafficlawyers.ca

I can see in a busy parking lot, crowded, etc. But in a clear lot it is good driver training so you can learn how to handle a slide if you hit a slick spot. We used a large school parking lot before we even had a license.

 

[canucklehead604]

^ of course you are correct. just depends what kind of mood the cop is in i suppose, and how the driver reacts if the cop approaches him. one always has the right to dispute the charge, which they should if a scenario like what you described transpired. justices tend to use reasonable discretion, especially if a guy has an otherwise clean record. for a clean driver they'd probably consider the tow and discharge fee penalty enough - assuming one is prepared and isn't a moron in court.

 

[Aquineas]

Yeah my driving record is pretty clean; last ticket was more than 10 years ago. In any case, I only did a few donuts; I deliberately didn't want to attract any unnecessary attention. The only thing I regret is not taking a photo of the tire-tracks in the otherwise pristine snow.

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[canucklehead604]

 

[waveman]

So early Monday morning after a nighttime snowfall that left about 6 inches of snow on the ground (this after days upon days of freezing rain), I decided to test the roads with my AWD G70 to see firsthand how treacherous they were. My wife had an event that she was looking forward to attending later on that day, and I was concerned what kind of conditions she'd run in to. I was not optimistic because my driveway was black-ice the day before, but my (mostly correct) thinking was the snow on top of the ice would at least provide more traction than the ice alone. I grew up in Chicago and Iowa, and lived in Toronto earlier in my adult life, so I probably have slightly more experience driving in the snow than some of my fellow Texans, but I'm not ready to go trekking across the Yukon or anything like that. In general, I like cold weather for the few brief moments I'm exposed to it only because I know I'm about to be back in the warmth soon after .

Note my Genesis is an AWD 3.3T, and our family-hauler is Expedition Max 4WD with new tires on it: the OEM Hankook tires on our Expedition were horrible. My feeling was, "I'll probably see the worst of the roads, but if my car can get through it, she will have no problems"- a hypothesis which proved to be both correct and incorrect- more on that in a moment. So I took out the G70 on completely unshovelled (and at that point, nearly pristine snow) roads and headed to my favorite store in the world, Sam's Club (hey, we're a family of six, so Sam's Club is our friend). I knew that they wouldn't be open, but I chose it because I knew driving there, I'd encounter a good mix of highway and side-roads to assess the driving conditions. It was funny watching all the Jeep Wranglers that were out and about- days like they've been the last week are like the Olympics for Jeep owners , and probably 1/3 the cars I saw early on were Jeep Wranglers, out in full-force basically getting the most out of their very extremely capable 4WD systems.

I received a couple of curious side-glances as I was plodding through the unploughed snow right along side them with unequal aplomb; certainly not as capable as they were, but I wasn't getting stuck, either. I even tackled a small hill without any problems whatsoever. The only dodgy event that I experienced was when hit a rut of snow that caught the passenger side of my car on the "expressway", and that certainly did everything possible to induce torque (as in the flat-spin variety). It was controllable though and I was able to steer out of it before it caught-hold. In summary, I have zero regrets whatsoever about buying an AWD G70 despite living in the frozen tundra Texas.

I pulled up to a nearly empty Sam's Club parking lot with very little signs of life inside the store. There were a couple of cars in the side parking lot, but absolutely none in the main. You know what that means, right?? Doughnuts!! Donuts even!! I did something I've not done in at least twenty years since I lived in Toronto; did donuts in my car! Now granted I only did a few, but it sure was fun. The car was pretty predictable, all things considered (I didn't bother disabling traction control or anything like that- in fact I'm not even sure how to do that lol).

In any event, I finally parked and walked up to the Sam's club door just after 8:00am (I have one of those "Club" level memberships that lets me in slightly earlier than the store opens for the general public). The door didn't automatically open, but after about a minute or so a guy emerges and manually unlocks the door, absolutely astonished that anyone actually made it to the store.

"Hi, are you open? I have a club level membership." I asked, as I simultaneously showed him my membership card.
"Uh, well we certainly won't turn away any customers. Do you know what you're getting? You'll have to self-checkout!"
"Yes I know exactly what I'm getting. No problem on the self-checkout."- something I absolutely loathe normally, but wasn't going to complain about then.

So I was the only customer in the store. The bonus in all this? Not only did they have a huge stack of Clorox Wipes in stock (they haven't had those regularly in nearly a year), but they had Member's Mark paper towels and facial tissues as well.

My wife did make it out of the house later and had a different experience though. By the time she made it out there was a lot more traffic, and while the Expedition had no problems (just switch the selector to 'snow' mode), there were a lot more people getting stuck, blocking traffic, etc, and her experience was a lot more stressful.

Sounds like fun. The last time I did donuts in my car I think it was a chocolate glazed and a strawberry glazed. They were most tasty.

 

[Andyj]

Apple fritter for me.

 

[jimmy buoy]

I can see in a busy parking lot, crowded, etc. But in a clear lot it is good driver training so you can learn how to handle a slide if you hit a slick spot. We used a large school parking lot before we even had a license.

Agreed Ed, but like many jurisdictions in North America we too are leaning to the "police state" model where government moves in to protect us from ourselves and empowers the police to be muscle.

One of the first things my dad taught me in driving was skid control. The best way to do that is on a vacant snowy parking lot. Knowing how your car reacts to various inputs on various levels of adhesion can be invaluable in real life driving. Being able to do a few donuts while under total control is a lot of fun and sharpens your skills as a driver. Done in the right way, it should not be an offence - it should just put a big smile on your face

 

[G-209264]

Funny, my daughter and her two girlfriends were eating McDs in an empty parking lot while observing some random car/s doing donuts and then leaving the scene before a cop rolled up on them enjoying their McDs. After explaining it wasn’t them, a Peel Police officer told her friend that they should try it like he used to back-in-the-day. She said no as she felt it’s not safe. He briefly instucted to her on how it’s done, did it himself and took off. Not all cops are the same unless that was some kind of entrapment plan lol!