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You would think that after all the years that I've spent in New England I would have a better memory of what winter was really like. Somehow when the days are getting shorter and the nights are getting crisper I can't seem to reach into my memory banks and recall how the driveway always gets coated with ice where it's shaded by the garage. Not that the ice is a driving problem because the winter rides are all wearing their Blizzack sneakers and can easily ignore frozen driveways. But it sure is hard to walk on black ice on a sloping driveway wearing a pair of old Topsiders especially carrying an armload of firewood. Part of the problem is one's loyalty to what you're holding. For some reason as the asphalt is rushing up to your head you just can't seem to let go of the firewood. Same thing happened to me years ago when I was getting ready for an autocross. I had my first Porsche, a 356 '58 sunroof coupe, and was going to rotate the tires the day before the event. We didn't have another set of tires to use for racing back in those days so we tended to just move what we had from one corner to another. With the wild camber settings in the rear, the inside of the rear tires took a lot of the load so tire rotation was done more often that oil changes. We even used to turn the tires around on the rims to get a few more miles out of them. It was February and the event was run by a small group of sports car junkies in the Frederick, Maryland area and called the Wintercross Series. There was some ice on my gravel driveway so I picked up the old garage floor jack so that I wouldn't have to drag it to the back of the car. With one hand holding the axle between the wheels and the other holding the handle I started down the driveway. I was nearly there when my Keds slipped on the ice and I started my decent. I say decent because it all happened so slow it was like climbing down a tree. I rolled to the right, looked down, saw the rocks approaching but just couldn't let go of the floor jack. I pulled my right hand over to catch my fall but took the jack with it. On a cement or asphalt surface that might have been a good move but not on gravel. The wheels of the jack dove into the gravel like a spoon into pudding taking my hand with it. On top of my hand, now tipped up like a sinking Titanic, the 100 lb jack pounded the back of my hand into the gravel like a pile driver. The doctor picked out the rocks and put the hand in a cast to protect the cracked bones and told me to rest for a few days. Why do they always say that when they know better? I had an autocross the next day and wasn't about to miss it. When I got home I took the gear shift knob off the shifter, carved a hole in the palm of the cast and didn't have any trouble shifting at the race. I didn't win but I didn't have any trouble shifting. As they say, there's no limit to what you'll do to be competitive, right? A couple of snowfalls, a few nights of freezing rain and things like ice scrapers with a glove attached, weatherproof boots and winter hats all come back into focus. Where did I put those things that came out of the car with such glee last spring? In Medfield we see people toss out perfectly good snow shovels when they're spring cleaning, do they think that it's never going to snow again? I'm as guilty as any; otherwise I wouldn't have to spend so much time looking for that stuff after the leaves fall. I'm certainly not the only one in New England with short term memory loss. Just look at what trouble drivers get into at the first snowfall. There are fender benders everywhere and traffic comes to a standstill. Later in the season a 12" snowfall won't slow anyone down a bit but that first 1" storm is a real killer. I came across a 3 series BMW thi s year near the train station that had attempted a left turn at normal dry pavement speed except the road had the remains of that first winter storm frozen in place. He turned but the little Bimmer stuck for only about half the turn going up over the curb and planting its nose into a ditch which high centered the car leaving it stuck. I stopped because I figured that Pearl and I could have him out in less that a minute and I hadn't done a good deed all week. Besides I needed the practice. I have a woven tow rope that works like a Chinese finger puzzle that I got at a PCA swap meet some years ago that has never failed to work. You just wrap it around something solid and then feed the rope back into itself through a hole in the weave. Pushing the end in about 4 or 5 inches is plenty and then when tension is applied, like your fingers in the puzzle, the rope tightens on itself. The owner knew he had a tow hook but didn't know where it attached to his car so that took a minute but by then Pearl was hooked up and waiting to show her muscle. A quick loop through the tow hook, a little slip of the Audi clutch and he was back on the road. Pearl was beaming! It's really great when things work out the way they're supposed to, isn't it? I've seen a couple of other opportunities to be helpful since that first snow but somehow I feel like everyone should have figured it out by now. After all we've all lived in New England long enough to remember how it works. Right? KTF |
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