Bloody Snow

I have been meaning to write a post on snow for the past week or so; specifically addressing a lie that my mum used to tell me. She used to always tell me that when she was a kid, she used to have to walk 5 miles through 6 inches of snow to get to school each day. It took me until I was around 9-10 years old that I realised that although my mum is really old, she probably wasn't around in the last ice age, which would have been the only way that my home town would even come close to getting snow. So, in the spirit of showing her what it is really like to try to get to school in the snow, I thought I would recount my morning.

Yesterday the day started off with steady rain and the forecast was for rain all day. Around 3pm however the rain turned to snow and a fairly serious sort of snow at that. I was staying at April's house and by the time we went to bed it was still snowing and there was at least 4 inches of snow on the ground. This morning I needed to head into the office, so that meant extracting my car (I also decided to de-snow April's car and move it to the other side of the street for her). The de-snowing of the cars probably took me 10 mins or so, which is fairly average for a snowing morning here, so that wasn't too bad. If you remember the road on which April lives, it is quite steep and the way the cars are parked means that I had to drive in reverse up the hill to get out of our parking spots. I moved April's car first and, due to the wonders of 4 wheel drive, did not have the slightest problem. I was able to back straight out, drive around the block and park her car nice and close to her building.

Therefore, with wildly misplaced confidence, I jumped into my car and attempted to back out. I engage the car in reverse, slowly take the clutch out and attempt to back out. The first thing that happens is my front wheels begin to spin (I, unlike April, only have front wheel drive) and the front of the car slips three feet down the hill. This has two consequences, first it causes me to swear, a lot. The second is that it means that my car is now parked at a really odd angle and taking up two parking spots, which means I cannot just leave it there and retreat back to April's place and stay there for the day. I have to move my car. Bugger. Luckily there is no-one parked that close to me, so my 3 foot lurch did not end up with me in the side of someone's car. So there is that, but I am still stuck with a car that only wants to go down the hill sideways rather than up it in an orderly fashion.

I would attempt to describe how difficult it is to try and do a reverse hill start with a manual transmission and 4 inches of snow under your tyres, but it is really one of those things that cannot be captured in words. If you do not have enough throttle you risk sliding forward into a snow bank, if you have to much your tyres spin and you go sideways down a hill.

Thus, I have only one option, to clear the snow out from under my tyres. With my wildly misplaced optimism still intact, I first try to do this with a combination of hands and kicking the snow away. After about 10 mins of this I admit defeat and decided I need actual tools to get this done. I decide to go check the little utility shed in April's building and 'borrow' the landlord's snow shovel. After about 15 mins of shoveling I finally manage to clear enough of the parking space for my car to make it to the plowed road ( I worked out that the trick was to clear the snow in a crescent shape, that way when the front of my car slipped, it would slip onto the road that I had cleared).

45 mins later, I was finally on the road, but I was so covered in snow that I had to stop home for a change of clothes first as mine were soaked by this stage. Thus, to my mum, I would like to say you have no idea how hard it is to drive 8 feet in four inches of snow. Give me 5 miles of walking in 6 inches of snow any day!