Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Always keep a pair of gloves in the car.

I woke up one normal winter day, went to the gym, ate breakfastlunch and then headed off to work. The sun was shining and the temperature was pretty average for the season (somewhere around 35-40 degrees). The extent of my outside time was pretty much 20 steps from home to car and then 20 more steps from car to work, so I only wore my light heavy jacket.

Heaviness of my jacket depends on the season. I have a light jacket for temperatures in the 60-range, a heavy light jacket for temperatures a little cooler in the 50-range, a light heavy jacket for temperatures falling into the 40-range, a heavy jacket for temperatures falling to freezing, and anything below that usually calls for two or more jackets. It's a science.

Anyway, I went to work and did my job. During my shift, though, some snow storm just rolls through. It started out as ice then turned into snow and it got super cold. After my shift, I went out to my car and this is what awaited me:


It was pretty cool because no one had left yet so it was all freshly fallen snow. This would have been totally fine except under all this snow was a layer of ice.


My car was completely frozen. Literally. I couldn't even open it because it was frozen. I had to ask one of the guys I was working with to come help me pry open my door. Once I got it open I had to figure out where my ice scraper was. Usually I keep it in my backseat but it wasn't there. For a minute I thought I had lost it, but it was just in the trunk. The next challenge was scraping off the ice. It's already pretty much the worst thing ever, but it's even worse when you're not bundled up and you have no gloves.


It took a really long time to get all the ice off. The whole time snow was falling all over my hands so when it was finally clear enough to drive my hands were basically frozen and I couldn't really hold the steering wheel. The next day I put a pair of gloves in the glove box (haha, punny!) so I will always be prepared to scrape ice off my car.