What we do to survive

Skills? Forget skills, I got deltoids! Last week I spent 2+ hours chip-chip-chipping ice off my sidewalk in order to avoid a city fine. I then discovered that if you don't clear the sidewalk, the city will be forced to go ahead and clear it for you. And bill you for it, but whatever. Why didn't somebody tell me?

Also, back in college, when the doors of my Grand Prix froze open (really), a guy who used to work on Pontiacs just happened to be walking through the parking lot and helped me out. If that's not evidence of a higher power, I don't know what is.

City workers have developed an uncanny skill to determine when I have finished clearing my driveway, removed my outer garments and settled into a comfortable chair so they can put a snow wall in front of my driveway within two minutes of my butt hitting the cushion.

Worked at a hospital pharmacy in wisconsin many years ago. One day my door lock on my 74 Catalina was frozen. My boss fills a syringe with 90% ethanol and shoots it into the key hole. Viola! Door opens, I get to go home.

How about taking a hand full of snow and washing the salt off of your cars head lights.

Mike...Ha...I kill me...
I once saw a professor at UWEC dump several steaming hot buckets of water directly over his car's engine to get it warmed up in sub-zero temperatures...Now I'm no professor, but I'm pretty sure that's probably not a good idea...

On a related note, here is the only dialogue I remember from an episode of ALF:

Alf and the dad guy are in the woods by a little campfire, and they are very cold.
Alf: My foot is cold. Can I stick it in your armpit?
Dad Guy: (exasperated) No, Alf, you can not stick your foot in my armpit.
Alf: (pause) How'd you like to wrap your cold armpit around my nice, warm foot?

I thought of another one? How many other people know how to quickly warm a cold hand or foot through body contortions to get that appendage closer to your personal body heat (hand in armpit, cross-legged foot in knee-pit, etc.)

I had a great midwestern moment last week. Big snowstorm, plows out but not salting. A school bus gets stuck going up a fairly modest grade, spinning all four tires in the back on snow that had been transformed to ice by the same force that makes coal into diamonds.

Behind the school bus was a long line of cars trying to creep up. I pulled over and grabbed my shovel and started throwing sand from the blue corner barrels under the rear tires, and the bus creeped slowly up the hill.

Then the second bus came around the corner. Same thing.

There's nothing as satisfying as the sound of a school bus full of third-graders cheering and giving you mittened and gloved thumbs-ups.

The second most satisfying thing is throwing a shovel full of sand at the front quarter panel of a jerk in a Lexus RX300 who zoomed around the bus and almost sideswiped me. That made the kids cheer even louder and the bus driver honk.

I got to work and told one of my colleagues I had rescued a school bus. He just laughed. "I dug out a cop today. And I dug out the car he was trying to dig out."

It has become a little contest.

We all -- even the non-electrical, non-mechanical ones -- know positive-to-positive, negative-to-negative. We know not to hook the tow chain to the bumper but rather to the solid metal hiding underneath. And we all have emergency kits in our trunks. Don't we?

I discovered the other gears on my auto transmission car. For instance, L means "traction control" and helps me get out of my driveway when I'm plowed in. Took me a while to figure that one out...

I helped a lady out of a snowbank yesterday. As I pushed on the hood, she pulled the amateur move of flooring the pedal in reverse for 20 seconds even though she was not moving, which did nothing but bury her deeper and coated me (and my new jeans I got for Christmas) in a nice coat of salty, black gunky, snowy substance. I was so annoyed with this lack of understanding of the rock and roll technique that I almost walked away and left her there but she had kids in the car. This should be a part of driver's ed.

MY BEST SKILLZ:

i've poured pots of boiling water on my door-seams before, to unstick/unfreeze them. that's a desperate move, right there. but not necessarily obvious, to the winter layman.

also, in iowa, the ruts from tires continually packing down ice/snow in the alleyways were SO DEEP that i couldn't turn into my parking area. too much incline, not enough momentum. i had to enlist help to make a makeshift ramp out of boards.

Although there are many skills we develop once winter rolls in, I'm guessing that nobody on this Earth can, after a fresh snow, open their car door without gd snow falling all over their seat. This happens regardless of how much snow you brush away from the car door area.

Ice on the inside of the windshield = scrape it off with a spice girls cd.

I've developed a pretty good hand warmer. IN MY PANTS!

Heeeeyoooooo!!!!!!!!!

Also, because of gloves, I assume we all are much more capable of using our mouths as a third appendage, to hold a glove while you try to find keys or dial your cellphone, or hold the mail while you brush snow from the car...

I JUST had to help a kid (new driver, I assume) figure out how to get out of a snow bank. Rock back and forth. Then try getting a shovel in case the car is hung up. Then take a floor mat and putting it under the spinning wheel. Of course, neighbors and passers-by stop to help. That's the midwest, right there.

From on "Hilary Pain Forest Ivory" Facebook: "Scraping an inch of ice from our windshields with a credit card (without breaking it), the 'Rock n Roll' method of getting your car unstuck from a snow bank..."

Don't eat yellow snow. Obviously. That's basic. But don't eat the green snow, either. That's antifreeze. It'll kill ya. You'll be dead but flexible. Nor should you eat the maroon snow. Hydraulic fluid. Shoots right through ya.