Feb. 8th, 2011

gerisullivan: (Default)
This time, however, I made it out of the driveway.

There was just a dusting of snow at Toad Woods. I had no problem climbing [livejournal.com profile] debgeisler and [livejournal.com profile] benveniste's driveway with a similar depth of snow 80-some miles later, but the snow texture in Middleton is completely different. It's grittier. The dusting in Wales was the super-slippery kind. The stuff where when you stop for a light on a perfectly flat road, it's hard getting started again. More than the gentlest pressure puts your tires to spinning. There's no way to get up my driveway with the gentlest of pressure.

So the car simply stopped moving forward about 60% of the way up.

Tonight I was at least an equal-opportunity cruncher of car into snowbank. First I overcompensated to the right, and soon was stuck. Okay, at least I could get out the driver's door. That was a win. I pulled the coal shovel out of the back of the car, cleared a bit of snow from behind the back passenger tire, but then took a tip learned from AAA Guy and focused on clearing snow'n'ice'n'plow leavings from the front passenger tire.

I was soon loose and continued backing down the driveway, slowly, slowly, eyes first on one sideview mirror, then the other, then the back, lather, rinse repeat.

Yep, sure enough, next thing I knew, the car was scraping snowbanks on the driver's side. I didn't actually get stuck that time, instead managing to rock'n'slide my way back until I was headed straight for the passenger side snowbank. The tire tracks of my journey to the bottom of the drive were quite a sight.

Once there, I pulled the coal shovel out once more and scraped the slimy-slippery thin layer off the flat "launching pad" area of the driveway. The snow was falling so fast that the driveway was white once more by the time I finished. Taking my chances, I jumped quickly back into the car, vroomed my way across the launch pad, then successfully slithered all the way up the rest of the driveway. I bet that left another interesting set of tire tracks, but it was midnight dark and I wasn't about to turn around and head back down the driveway so I could see them with my headlights.

Roads were bad until 2-3 miles before Sturbridge, then they were only occasionally problematic for the rest of the trip.

It's good to be here. Here being Deb & Mike's as opposed to here being a snow bank, rest area, or some other waypoint.

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gerisullivan

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