warn your warmth to turn away
It all, in the end, comes down to the ass-truck. We remember the ass-truck and how I was t-boned in said truck LAST winter? Yes? Okay. Since my car is slowly dissolving into Acura shaped bits around me (I hear it whispering, late at night, "Oh god, just let me die," sometimes), I drove the ass-truck home Weds. night, pre-blizzard. That left my parents at home with two sedans (one that recently had an unfortunate encounter of the SUV kind in the parking lot of a Shell station). This, in theory, shouldn't have been a problem since my brother also owns a massive, hulking, beast of a truck, and, in theory, should have been able to pick up either parent if they needed to go somewhere.
So, this morning, I get a call, bright and early, from my dad, and he's mumbling something about my brother's truck being dead, and could I please use the ass-truck to plow down the drifts in his driveway by bulldozering in from the road? Also, he's apparently made an appointment for my mechanic ("Big Matt") to look at my car one more time, so we're gonna need to fnd a way to get it OUT of the driveway.*
(For the record, getting out of my townhome complex was super easy. The people who run it have this landscaping/snow removal crew who have a thing for showing up on my deck in the dead of night and shoveling snow furiously for about ten minutes before plowing the drives and parking lots with, perhaps, undue enthusiasm. You've never heard anything until you've heard these guys racing their trucks up and down dry streets with the plow-blades down.)
Alright.
I do the whole "put the ass-truck into 4WD and drive like hell until I hit something," and it works. I make it to their door, and dad's very pleased.
"Since you managed that bit of carnage so well, why don't you try to back YOUR car out of the driveway now?"
This is a long, twisting, gravel driveway that has only the tracks the ass-truck made in it to guide me out, mind.
So. "Sure," I say. And I swear to god the man said to back that sonofabitch out.
Which is what I do. I throw it into reverse, floor it, and promptly fishtail ACROSS the driveway and into the ditch on the other side.
"Nice,except for maybe the part where you should have driven it straight out," dad says, as he hands me a shovel. "Dig."
I spend the next twenty mintues digging my car out of the ditch. Only, that doesn't work, and every time we try to drive it out, the wheels just sink deeper into the snowymuddygravel.
Dad gets in the car then, rocks it in and out of gear a few times, and then says to me, "Push."
Oh.my.god. My car is only about five inches off of the road on a DRY day. Now? The front end--and it's front wheel drive, of course--is submerged in snow.
Me? I end up on my knees in the snow and the mud and the gravel and dead grass, pushing my car out of a ditch.
And? I GOT THAT MOTHERFUCKER OUT.
Oh hell yeah. I am a monster.
Also, I think I hurt something. I'm not sure what yet, but holyshit OW.
*"Big Matt" could not, for the second time, pinpoint exactly why my car likes to die when I shift into second gear. His advice? "Wait 'til it gets worse." I was tempted to ask if that was his theory on dealing with his pervasive body odor, but refrained.
So, this morning, I get a call, bright and early, from my dad, and he's mumbling something about my brother's truck being dead, and could I please use the ass-truck to plow down the drifts in his driveway by bulldozering in from the road? Also, he's apparently made an appointment for my mechanic ("Big Matt") to look at my car one more time, so we're gonna need to fnd a way to get it OUT of the driveway.*
(For the record, getting out of my townhome complex was super easy. The people who run it have this landscaping/snow removal crew who have a thing for showing up on my deck in the dead of night and shoveling snow furiously for about ten minutes before plowing the drives and parking lots with, perhaps, undue enthusiasm. You've never heard anything until you've heard these guys racing their trucks up and down dry streets with the plow-blades down.)
Alright.
I do the whole "put the ass-truck into 4WD and drive like hell until I hit something," and it works. I make it to their door, and dad's very pleased.
"Since you managed that bit of carnage so well, why don't you try to back YOUR car out of the driveway now?"
This is a long, twisting, gravel driveway that has only the tracks the ass-truck made in it to guide me out, mind.
So. "Sure," I say. And I swear to god the man said to back that sonofabitch out.
Which is what I do. I throw it into reverse, floor it, and promptly fishtail ACROSS the driveway and into the ditch on the other side.
"Nice,except for maybe the part where you should have driven it straight out," dad says, as he hands me a shovel. "Dig."
I spend the next twenty mintues digging my car out of the ditch. Only, that doesn't work, and every time we try to drive it out, the wheels just sink deeper into the snowymuddygravel.
Dad gets in the car then, rocks it in and out of gear a few times, and then says to me, "Push."
Oh.my.god. My car is only about five inches off of the road on a DRY day. Now? The front end--and it's front wheel drive, of course--is submerged in snow.
Me? I end up on my knees in the snow and the mud and the gravel and dead grass, pushing my car out of a ditch.
And? I GOT THAT MOTHERFUCKER OUT.
Oh hell yeah. I am a monster.
Also, I think I hurt something. I'm not sure what yet, but holyshit OW.
*"Big Matt" could not, for the second time, pinpoint exactly why my car likes to die when I shift into second gear. His advice? "Wait 'til it gets worse." I was tempted to ask if that was his theory on dealing with his pervasive body odor, but refrained.