It is a popular urban legend that the Inuit or Eskimo have an unusually large number of words for snow. In reality, the number of words depends on the definitions of Eskimo (there are a number of languages) and snow, and on the method of counting numbers of words in languages that have quite different grammatical structures from English.
(A solid 15 minutes of Wikipedia reading and linking later, I know much about language and am determined to read Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell...)
Back to the wisdom of my snow experiences. I may not have a vast number of words for snow (and as it turns out neither do the eskimos) but i do have some mad snow scraping skills that i would like to share with all others without garages finding themselves living in the blizzard belt (I am hoping this catches on as opposed to rust belt).
Allison's PSA...
- Assess the situation! Do you really have to go out?
- ALWAYS keep the snow scraper in the ridable part of the car as opposed to the trunk. Sometimes the trunk is too covered in snow to open, and all that snow falls into the trunk, what a mess!
- Before opening your door, clean off the snow from the seam of the car door to prevent all that snow from landing directly on your seat giving you a cold, wet bottom later...
- Put your key in and get the car warming up (if you have one of those fancy car starters you get to skip this step) STOP, before doing that be sure your windshield wipers are not on from the day before. This is my most important piece of advice! If you fail to check, and you like me, leave your car door open as you quickly grab the scraper and start the car, then those wipers have just dumped a shit load of snow on you and the inside of your car. (Inevitably i make this ridiculous mistake half a dozen times a year!)
- Turn on the defrost (front and rear).
- Try, oh try, not to tense up the whole body while scraping that snow off, you may be angry but no need to tax the body that way, helps too to stop muttering (or yelling) swears.
- Avoid the temptation to only scrape a small section of the windshield, but we all know there are days when that is all you can manage to do!
- Check yourself, now likely covered in snow, so brush your self off.
- Beat the brush against your tire to remove excess snow before heaving it into the back seat.
- Drive slow. Be safe.
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4 comments:
Your wisdom is spot on!
Dee
allison, after so many years, I still love you just the same. For post like this. thanks.
I thought the bolded, important piece of advice about the windshield wipers was going to be about preventing damage to them--by straining against heavy snow or dragging themselves over rough ice--but no, it was about keeping snow off you. Your self-preservation instinct runs on overdrive. Also, you're the only person I know who can use the word 'swear' as a noun (pl. swears), which is cute.
Priceless -- and as a newly "open" parker part of the week, I found my skills a bit rusty -- you hit all the MOST important points, especially the "don't let your wipers dump 3 lbs of snow into the car, dummy!" point. You were kinder . . . These are the true 21st century survival skills :-)
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