Former Snow Warrior Now Frightened by Flurries

I can vividly remember the good ol’ days. I’d wake up in the morning and hear on the radio that it was snowing outside, and the forecast was for another six to eight inches before it would stop. “Oh boy!” I’d exclaim, “This is gonna be great!”

Then I would hurry to get dressed so I could begin my journey to work. Back then, I just loved driving in the snow. For many years I had a company car, a gorgeous 1984 Oldsmobile Delta-88. It was a massive hunk of Detroit steel with rear-wheel drive and a powerful V-8 engine.

The car was so front-heavy, the back tires barely touched the ground. It was perfect for driving in snow — perfect, that is, if your goal was to spin your wheels furiously, wiggle back and forth like a mackerel on a hook every time you drove up a hill, and do “doughnuts” in every unplowed parking lot you happened to pass by.

Back when I was a young lad, in my late 20s and early 30s, driving in the snow was an exciting adventure. I would invent new Winter Olympic sports, and do the “play by play” commentary as I competed for the gold medal.

“This is Jim McKay at the Automobile Giant Slalom Bobsled track here in Calgary. Our final contestant today is the tan Oldsmobile from the United States. He needs to break his own personal best time to overtake the blue Volkswagen from West Germany and win the gold. And there he goes! He’s making his way down Route 4. Just look at his trunk slide back and forth. He’s pushing the RPM to the red line.

"Now he’s approaching the treacherous intersection with Route 202. Let’s see if he takes this turn cautiously. No! He’s accelerating through the downhill turn! I think the light was red. Ooh, he’s going to lose a couple tenths of a second for side-swiping that mail box. Now he’s back up to full speed and it’s time for the icy on-ramp to Route 8. Look at his split time! He’s 1.2 seconds ahead of his personal best! The gold medal is within reach if he can just keep from hitting any guardrails on his way to Waterbury!”

But then something weird happened. One night when I was 49 years old, I went to bed. And the next morning when I woke up, I was 50, and my desire to drive in the snow had completely evaporated. In fact, the idea of getting behind the wheel when the forecast called for even a “slight possibility of flurries” now struck dread into my heart.

“Oh no, not flurries,” I would say, and still say to this day. “It could get slippery. Maybe I should work from home today. I don’t want to get into an accident or get stuck somewhere. Let me look at that weather radar again. These flurries sometimes turn into blizzards, you know!”

The funny thing is, my company car now is a Chevy Equinox, a modest sized hunk of Detroit steel (via the Ontario, Canada, assembly plant with parts from Mexico), which has 4-wheel drive and operates fine in the snow. The back end doesn’t fish-tale, the wheels rarely spin too fast, and it goes uphill in the snow without a problem.

The only problem is in my head, where I’ve lost my nerve and my sense of vehicular adventure. Good thing we have the Internet now, so I can get work done without leaving the house. And while in my basement office, typing away on my computer, I occasionally look up and gaze at a shiny object hanging on the wall: my gold medal from Calgary.