Dear winter - you suck

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