Once again the grip of winter is firmly
upon us and I for one say ba-humbug.
That is not a negative remark toward
Christmas, but it is a comment on that dreaded, frosty, icy, cold,
miserable time of year that happens every year no matter what.
You would think being born and raised
in Canada I would be used to winter and cold and snow and all the
other miserable aspects of the non-summer months.
I am used to is, but that does not mean
I have to like it.
I am just not a fan of winter.
Running out to your car in the morning
as your breath transforms into ice crystals and the boogers in your
nose freeze is always a fun way to start the day.
If the lock on your car is not frozen,
you can enter your vehicle with relative ease, but then you make the
mistake of letting that crystalizing breath collide with the
windshield and suddenly you have ice on the inside of your car.
But first, you have to get rid of the
frost on the outside so you start your car, crank up the heater –
even though for the first few minutes it is blowing cold air – and
then climb out and start scraping away the handiwork of Jack Frost
(who is a jerk by the way).
If you are smart and plan ahead, you
will have an ice scrapper handy. Which I do, unless one of my kids
have gotten their grubby little paws on it then who knows where it
has ended up. (I suspect the back seat of their own car.)
I am pretty sure anyone who has ever
owned a car has had to dig into their wallet and pull out a credit
card or something similar and scrape the frost away as you lose
feeling in your fingers in 1.2 seconds all the while muttering
something about children, ice scrapers and why you should not have
had children.
With the outside mostly scraped clean,
you once again return to the inside of your vehicle that is just
slightly warmer than the outside.
The inside of the window is still
covered in man-made frost, so you dig out the plastic card again and
scrape the inside of the windshield causing the dash to be covered by
an interior snow storm.
But because you continue to breath and
fill the car with humidity, it just frosts up again, so you end up
driving down the street scrunched up in your seat so you can see
through that little spot at the bottom of the windshield where they
heater is finally starting to gain ground on the assault from that
Jack idiot.
The more you drive, the bigger the
clear spot gets and the entire windshield will typically be
completely cleared about three seconds before you arrive at your
destination.
But on occasion you forego the scraper
altogether and opt for a liquid assault on Jack's handiwork.
You can use the windshield washer fluid
to remove the frost for you, but as we all know, the plan is flawed
because the washer fluid freezes on the windshield and while it does
create some pretty patterns it is not conducive to roadway viewing.
So what do you do?
You spray even more windshield washer
fluid in an effort to rid your viewing portal of the frozen fiasco
that is part of the joys of winter.
Sure you don't have to scrape, but you
end up using half a gallon of windshield wiper fluid just to get down
the block.
So, no I am not a fan of winter, but I
know this too shall pass – and the sooner the better.
Copyright 2015, Darren Handschuh