I don’t go to Chick-Fil-A all that often. Don’t get me wrong, their original chicken sandwich is the pinnacle of a piece of fried chicken between bread, and I can usually devour an entire carton waffle fries between the drive-thru and my house, but I try to limit my fast food intake these days. When I do go, about half the time I forget I have a gift card that someone gave me sitting in the storage console of my Highlander. That’s why it was available this morning when I needed a makeshift ice scraper. No, not to clean off the outside of my windshield before driving. The ice I urgently had scrape away was forming on the inside. Apparently, when the temperature is hovering around 0 degrees Fahrenheit, this is a thing. I can only guess at the science behind it: Maybe running the heater causes condensation on the glass which then freezes because it is ice age cold outside. All I know is that in the dark at 6:30 this morning somewhere between West Yellowstone and Bozeman, Montana, the inside of my windshield started to ice over. The scraper I had sensibly purchased was sitting stupidly in my back seat after I had used it earlier. The side of the road was icy and not plowed. I couldn’t stop. My only choice was to find something to make a hole in the ice so I could see in front of me. Rummaging around in the storage console with one hand, I found the gift card, which I used to scrape away until the Sun came up.
Somewhere in the dark, scraping with one hand and steering with the other, the thought hit me that driving in Florida has made me soft. The main obstacles on the roadways there are cars with license plates from Ohio or points further north going 20 miles an hour under the speed limit. On the way to Bozeman, I was warned to be on the lookout for Bison in the roadway. That’s hard to do while scraping ice away with a Chick-Fil-A gift card. Winter driving is full of problems like this to solve.
Your ticket to chicken sandwich goodness or a handy ice scraper!
Take windshield washer fluid for example. In Florida, this is something you can safely take for granted. They top you off every time your oil is changed, and life is good. Out west in winter, it’s a different story. Having one semi in front of you can kick up a gallon of salt and slush onto your windshield. I used up my entire reservoir of fluid driving from Moab, Utah to Salt Lake City. I bought another gallon at Wal-Mart, which probably is more than I’ve used in 26 years in Florida, only to find later that once the thermometer dips below about 25 degrees, the washer fluid delivery system freezes up. At that point, you just to have to learn to live with looking out at the road through a thick film of grime, which is not ideal but still beats ice.
It’s unfortunate that there is no such thing as whole car washer fluid. Assuming the temperature is above 25 degrees, this mythical invention could clean the grime off an entire car. Instead, my grayish green vehicle is now mostly a shade of salty white. I’ve already invested at least two Chick-Fil-A value meals worth of quarters into washing it off. As I sit here in Rapid City, South Dakota, I wonder what’s the point. My next ride down the interstate would just replaster it. Better to wait on the car wash until I get somewhere that’s above freezing.
My car somewhere in South Dakota.
Winter driving does have its occasional charms. The scenery can be breathtaking. Driving in fall when the leaves are turning to a golden yellow or burning red is still the best, but seeing a winter wonderland outside your windshield, when it’s not frosted over or covered in grime, can be breathtaking. What’s maddening is that the view can change on a dime. Driving to the top of a mountain between Idaho Falls and Yellowstone, it was like I was heading into a Bavarian version of Shangri-La, as can be seen in the featured image for this post. Five minutes later though, I was driving through a minor snowstorm and sandwiched between a Subaru from California going about 25 miles per hour and a Honda from Washington driven by someone so impatient that he nearly crashed into an oncoming snowplow just to get around us. Way to kill the mood, winter.
Driving along Interstate 90 in the upper midwest, there are places where a gate can be lowered when the highway needs to be closed. It doesn’t matter if your plans dictate otherwise, if the authorities decree you can’t take the road out of Gillette, Wyoming, that’s where you are staying. While I applaud this for safety, I’m reviewing driving, which by definition is the ability to operate a vehicle from one point to another. I give winter driving four traffic cones, which might seem like a good rating, but the fewer traffic cones you see when driving, the better, so this means that winter driving pretty much sucks.
