Today, we got two inches of snow! It has been an unusually warm winter thus far ... well until Tuesday when it got really, really cold. Since I changed my job, the bus commute is now not an option and so it's time to master driving in the snow. I don't think it is the snow that makes me nervous as much as the ice. Especially when you can't see it! And when you try to turn corners, you end up somewhere else. Not my idea of being safe.
So drove to work in the snow today. It had just started so it wasn't that bad. Traffic was really slow. Down to less than 15 miles an hour which even for this slow driver was a little too slow. (Although my mother would not say that I'm a slow driver, kids!) When I left work, we had had about two inches and it was sitting on top of my car. Gone are the days when I hopped off the bus and into the multi-story carpark where I was able to park my car undercover because I went into work early. Now it is necessary to brush off all the snow from the car before I can go home.
Oh! I am so thankful that I had my car battery replaced this summer and so I don't have to worry too much about the car not starting. I am also thankful that even though I worked over my hours today, it was still light and I could see what I was doing.
So I got to christen my little brush and ice-scraper! It was really cool! Interesting how one side of the car was iced up with snow and the other was still fluffy. It was rather fun revealing my little Focus in all it's glory. Got the engine started to begin working on that icy stuff (Thanks Dad for being a good example of this growing up! I remembered!) So I'm almost done, so I think, when this nice Minnesotan born woman appeared and asked me to do hers. (See I must have been doing something right!) She let me know that I needed to do the roof of the car also because the snow might slip off the back of the car when I'm driving and block the rear window which, apparently, you can get a ticket for. She said she knew from experience. Well I don't remember reading that in the MDOT driver's manual. So glad that she let me know of the idiosyncrasies of this state. So I got to play with my little brush thingy some more.
I made the right choice in taking the freeway home. The other roads were still very mushy. I usually go the back way home if I leave work after 3:00 p.m. because the freeway is always choc-a-block. I decided being safe and slow was better than slippery and fast. I would rather burn up my calories in different ways than in nervous tension. The freeway was clear. The Ministry of Transport did a great job! So I'm congratulating them in my head when I remember what I saw on TV about five years ago. Rutabaga juice (or the juice from Swede as the English know it) has excellent properties in deicing the roads. Now although I like driving on clear roads, the thought of using this most delicious of all vegetables in this manner, seems like defiling a sacred edifice! Since I don't know if it was rutabaga juice that they used or whether it was salt and sand, I was able to drive home in denial convincing myself that the reason I don't find many Swedes in the stores is because the general populace does not grace a refined palate. Why else would they cover these delicious Swedes in a thick layer of wax? And why do they grow them so small?
