Sliding Backwards Down My Driveway
Jan. 18th, 2012 08:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jayfurrThis morning I enjoyed the thrilling experience of sliding sideways, then backwards, down my steep driveway, all but powerless to stop despite my Subaru Forester's all-wheel drive.
Whee!
We live at the top of a hill in northern Vermont. Our driveway is about, oh, 100 yards long, and paved. It's steepest right at the bottom but the whole thing isn't exactly 'level'. This past weekend it snowed (we had our driveway plowed), then it got super-cold (-10 on Sunday morning), but yesterday temperatures inexplicably got up in the high 30s in the afternoon. It even rained a bit. But last night we made it up the driveway with only a bit of slipping on our snowy, icy driveway and only a few "this traction BITES" yellow warning messages on the Subaru's dashboard.
But overnight the entire length of the driveway, even the flat part at the top in front of our house, froze into a massive sheet of black ice. When we backed out of our garage and tried to turn around to head down the driveway, the car didn't want to turn around. It wanted to slide, like a hockey puck on a greased rink, sideways and backwards in the direction it was already going. Working the anti-lock brakes did nothing; steering "into the skid" did nothing. If it hadn't been for a snowbank by the side of the driveway God only knows what would have happened... but my money is on us rocketing backwards down the driveway, across the road at the bottom, and winding up upside down in the ditch.
But since we had miraculously gotten stopped with one tire in a snowbank, we climbed out, verrrrrrrry slowly crept on foot back up to the garage, put on our Yaktrax and Microspikes, filled buckets with the sort of high-test ice melt that's guaranteed to ten below and is made out of all sorts of nasty chemicals including depleted uranium, and salted the wazoo out of the area around the car, the area the car would need to back into to get turned around, and finally, the rest of the driveway. We went through one and a half BIG bags of the ice melt... and were gratified to see, almost immediately, a river of salt water running right down the driveway.
We wanted to wait for it to really, really work, but we had to get to work... so we got back in the car and tried turning around and getting pointed in the right direction. When that worked, we started working our way down the steep driveway, advancing a few inches at a time so as not to work up any momentum. All went well until the last ten feet of the driveway where it met the road -- the car spun sideways and went sliding inexorably downhill, across the road ... and stopped just shy of the ditch on the far side, which I swear went "drat".
Our whole road -- we live on a non-town-maintained "private road" with seven houses on it -- was about as bad, but at least it was level. But then once on the paved main road, there was no ice, no snow, no nothin' ... and it was smooth sailing from there on.
Why am I posting about this? In the end, nothing bad happened, right? Well, it was a damn worrisome situation and I just about had to change underwear after we got going sliding backwards there at the top of the driveway. Moral of the story: even a Subaru Forester with all-wheel drive is aided by a bit of precautionary salting half an hour before we need to leave for work. Important to remember this. :)
Whee!
We live at the top of a hill in northern Vermont. Our driveway is about, oh, 100 yards long, and paved. It's steepest right at the bottom but the whole thing isn't exactly 'level'. This past weekend it snowed (we had our driveway plowed), then it got super-cold (-10 on Sunday morning), but yesterday temperatures inexplicably got up in the high 30s in the afternoon. It even rained a bit. But last night we made it up the driveway with only a bit of slipping on our snowy, icy driveway and only a few "this traction BITES" yellow warning messages on the Subaru's dashboard.
But overnight the entire length of the driveway, even the flat part at the top in front of our house, froze into a massive sheet of black ice. When we backed out of our garage and tried to turn around to head down the driveway, the car didn't want to turn around. It wanted to slide, like a hockey puck on a greased rink, sideways and backwards in the direction it was already going. Working the anti-lock brakes did nothing; steering "into the skid" did nothing. If it hadn't been for a snowbank by the side of the driveway God only knows what would have happened... but my money is on us rocketing backwards down the driveway, across the road at the bottom, and winding up upside down in the ditch.
But since we had miraculously gotten stopped with one tire in a snowbank, we climbed out, verrrrrrrry slowly crept on foot back up to the garage, put on our Yaktrax and Microspikes, filled buckets with the sort of high-test ice melt that's guaranteed to ten below and is made out of all sorts of nasty chemicals including depleted uranium, and salted the wazoo out of the area around the car, the area the car would need to back into to get turned around, and finally, the rest of the driveway. We went through one and a half BIG bags of the ice melt... and were gratified to see, almost immediately, a river of salt water running right down the driveway.
We wanted to wait for it to really, really work, but we had to get to work... so we got back in the car and tried turning around and getting pointed in the right direction. When that worked, we started working our way down the steep driveway, advancing a few inches at a time so as not to work up any momentum. All went well until the last ten feet of the driveway where it met the road -- the car spun sideways and went sliding inexorably downhill, across the road ... and stopped just shy of the ditch on the far side, which I swear went "drat".
Our whole road -- we live on a non-town-maintained "private road" with seven houses on it -- was about as bad, but at least it was level. But then once on the paved main road, there was no ice, no snow, no nothin' ... and it was smooth sailing from there on.
Why am I posting about this? In the end, nothing bad happened, right? Well, it was a damn worrisome situation and I just about had to change underwear after we got going sliding backwards there at the top of the driveway. Moral of the story: even a Subaru Forester with all-wheel drive is aided by a bit of precautionary salting half an hour before we need to leave for work. Important to remember this. :)
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no subject
Date: 2012-01-18 05:21 pm (UTC)Even driving up the big hills in San Francisco makes me nervous; after each stop there's that moment where you have to take your foot off the brake and put it on the gas pedal, and the instant in between is much too fraught with possibility. (and there's the knowledge all the cars above you are doing the same thing...)
no subject
Date: 2012-01-22 08:54 pm (UTC)