Slush War

I hate slush. Not the kind that you eat, that stuff is kind of delicious for being crushed ice and syrup. I'm talking about the crap that accumulates under your car.

I had to get to a meeting today so I asked my parents if I could borrow my mom's car. They agreed. About twenty minutes before the meeting was to start, I pulled on my coat, my boots and grabbed my purse. I unlocked the car, adjusted the mirrors and left.

I drove down the road until I got to the ramp that would get me on the highway. That's when I first heard it. A strange crunching sound. I didn't think much of it given that the ramp was still snow covered. Snow frequently crunches under tires. I got onto the highway and drove for a few minutes before approaching my turn. I signalled, waited for two transports to pass and turned. Again, I heard the crunch. I was about five minutes from school so I decided that I would deal with it then. The thing about this road is that it's pretty much the stereotypical country road. Ruts, washboarding, bumps, potholes, you name it, it's there. Rather than fixing these problems, our ever intelligent city council decided that putting up warning signs was sufficient... but I'm not going there. When I got to the first chasm, I heard something hitting, then scraping against the asphalt. Not a sound you want to hear normally. I heard it a few more times. When I completed the required left, right and left turn, the crunching returned. I parked and got out of the car.

I discovered two things.

1) I'd run into the snowbank (Oops...)
2) There was so much slush around the wheels that there was practically no room for the tire to move.

What to do? What to do? Well, duh. I proceeded to kick the crap out of my car. I imagine it looked pretty funny. No only was there a ton of slush on each wheel, it was frozen there so I was really kicking. I hacked at it with the underside of my foot. When that didn't work, I bashed at it with my heel. I tried numerous angles. It took a couple of minutes, but it worked. Except on the front right tire. I kicked with arms flailing and that shit was not moving. I gave up and went to my meeting.

Not my car, but imagine that around all the tires. How I didn't notice before is a mystery.

About an hour later, I returned more determined. I think the sun helped out a bit. This time I kicked higher up with the intention of removing what I could and leaving the rest. As it turned out, this was a brilliant strategy. I got it all! Given how huge this clump was, I took it out from under the car.

I was ready to go and basking in the glow of my minor success. I started backing up but found that I was stuck. I gave it more gas and slowly crushed the slush heap that had caused me so many problems. I made sure to look at my parking space, now littered with heaps of brown, sandy, ice, before leaving I had to laugh at the amount there was. It was ridiculous.

The drive home was silent. Success! My feet hurt. Fail!

Lauren.