On Winter Driving

Well, what little snow there was in the cities is now quickly melting, thanks to sixty degree temperatures in March. Not that I’m complaining. It’s just got me thinking.

I haven’t lived in the U.P. for a long time, and ever since then I’ve been treated to the easy winters, at least in terms of snow accumulation, of Wisconsin and Minnesota. This has come with a price, however, and it’s the degradation of my winter driving skills.

When I was in Michigan, I could drive in anything. Blinding snowstorms? Check. Behind cars whose owners didn’t bother to clean off their roofs, thus causing a mini blinding snowstorm behind it? Check. Through the aftermaths of blinding snowstorms, where your bumper was pushing snow and if you stopped you were never going to get started again? Check. No big deal. Heck, sometimes the hardest part of the winter was figuring out which lump of snow your car was parked under after a blinding snowstorm.

But now I’m here in Minnesota, and I’ll admit that my winter driving skills have dulled some. It’s like a muscle, if you don’t use it, you lose it. I am proud to report, however, that I still remember a thing or two. Driving to and from Michigan Tech a half hour each way over a four year period when winter takes up 90 percent of the school year isn’t something you just forget. Take, for example, the first snow of the year in Wisconsin or Minnesota, which is always comical. This is when about half of the cars go in the ditch, and the other half crawl about in the right lane at 4 miles an hour, their drivers wide eyed and white knuckled. I however, relying on my veteran experience, just laugh as I fly by them all in the right lane, going 6 miles an hour, my knuckles still their normal color for the most part. It’s not much, but I guess it’s something.

I blame part of my degradation on my car. It’s fairly new, which means it’s made of all plastic, which means its lighter, which means instead of actually going through the snow, it pretty much floats along top of it, going in whatever direction it feels like, which does not necessarily correspond to the direction that the tires are turned. (I can complain all I want about the old cars I drove in Michigan, but they could at least handle the snow, what being weighed down by all that rust.)

Overall, I guess I’m not too concerned. If I ever move back to the U.P., I’ll just purchase some gigantic gas guzzler of a vehicle that weighs about the same as three of my current cars put together and I’ll be fine. Plus, with technology progressing the way it has, I’ll probably be able to always work from home anyway.