Of Cars and Snow

Thanks to the winter storm this week that dumped a huge amount of snow on our fair city (and when I say huge, I employ the use of Central Illinoisan vernacular: 6 inches) and the lackluster snow removal efforts of the U of I housing crews, I spent forty minutes today extricating our Volkswagen Golf from it's ice encased parking space. The storm, which barreled across the region on Wednesday, shut down everything from the University to local businesses and kept the Champaign plow drivers working overtime several days in a row this week. In fact it was only yesterday when our parking lot was finally cleared, leaving our car entombed behind a jagged barricade of ice and snow.

I am no stranger to having my car stuck mind you. One of my favorite teenage pastimes while growing up in Minnesota was to drive my 1986 Mercury Grand Marquis (more tank than car) into snowbanks throughout the long winters. Several friends and I became experts at this and developed quite a technique. The trick was to glance the snowbank with the passenger side, thereby causing an explosion of snow to cascade across the car and into the street. If one did this correctly it wouldn't even slow the car down. Turn the wheels too far to the curb and your car would plunge into the snow, rendering escape nearly impossible.

As a note: suburban snowbanks were the best for this pastime because of two factors:
1. The width of suburban streets is generally wide enough, comfortably, for four lanes of traffic - even in residential neighborhoods. All of this snow piled on the curb meant TALL snowbanks.
2. In Apple Valley and Rosemount, where I spent my teenage years, the curbs were not perpendicular to the street. Rather, they gradually angled up from the gutter in a rounded manner toward the snowbank thus ensuring no broken axles or flat tires.

One of my most vivid memories associated with this game was a winter night in late 1996. At the time I was working a part time job at Media Play (think Borders or Barnes and Noble but much worse and poorly managed) and I was giving a ride home to one of my coworkers who also went to high school with me. I was a couple of years ahead of her in school, and I had no romantic interest whatsoever, but being the older, more mature person, it was my duty to impress her with my many feats of skill. I had an image to uphold and I wanted to impress upon her that I was no ordinary guy. I was super cool and daring. I lived life on the edge and I was full of spontaneity. This was the perfect time to show off my driving.

In retrospect I should have stopped with one snowbank. The first one was easy so I tempted fate a second time. When the second go-round was successful I should have known not to push my luck. On the third snowbank, and by this time I could tell that she was a bit uneasy about the whole situation (all the more reason to show her that this was merely routine - like stopping at a traffic light), my car skidded just a bit on some ice and plunged headlong into a five foot tall mound of heavily packed snow. I was stuck, the snow covering my front tires completely.

I thought about this moment today as slowly chipped my car out of the snow in our parking lot. I thought about the embarrassment of trying, for an hour before anyone stopped to help, to dig the vehicle out with my ice scraper as my coworker sat inside with the engine running. How I ruined my shoes standing in snow up to my thighs desperately trying to free my car of an ever worsening situation. With each spin of the tires the car dug itself further and further into the snow, creating ice beneath the wheels that made situation more and more hopeless. I remembered how eventually some nice people came along, hooked up a chain to my car and pulled me out with their pickup truck. Other neighborhood residents came and pitched in, shoveling snow from behind my tires. I was grateful for the help but also mortified about the situation I had caused. After an hour and a half of being stuck I finally dropped off my passenger at her house. Exhausted, cold, soaking wet, and defeated I returned home over an hour later than I was supposed to.

It was shortly this event that I retired from my brief career in snowbank ramming. I guess it's all part of being a teenager - testing limits, showing off, feeling invincible - but I'm really glad I never got into an accident or caused any serious injuries to myself or anyone else while trying to impress my friends during those long winters.