Winter Driving*

*OR, Get The F*** Off Of My Roads If You Don't Know How To Drive On Snow!


I live in the great north woods.  We get snow.  I have lived around snow my entire life, as I was born and raised 100 miles north of where I now live.  From sometime in October until a time in (the earliest) late March, the roads have snow on them.  That means, no dry pavement for about five months out of the year.  This time period just happens to coincide with the school year, and that is where this story comes from.

'Back home' has a world-class engineering school.  Students and teachers/professors come from all over the world to be part of the university.  Of course, this means a great deal of culture shock for some of these people, as well as a very different way of living.  Many, many of these people have never seen snow.  This causes a number of problems.  K's niece used to work at public safety at the school and told this story:

One morning a professor from India came in and--in his thick, Indian accent--said, "Need ID card."

The Niece:  "Okay, you need a new ID card.  Step this way and we'll get a new picture.  What happened to your old card?"

Professor:  "Got in car.  Started car.  Car wouldn't move.  Tires spin.  Got out of car.  Put ID card under back tire.  Got in car.  Put car in gear, stepped on gas.  And (adding hand gesture indicating flying motion, while looking off into the distance)  'FWINGGGG!', card went flying.  So, need new ID card."

About this time, The Niece had to turn away from the professor so that he wouldn't see her laughing.  She couldn't stop laughing.  To this day, she doesn't know HOW she managed to complete the task of getting him his new ID card.  This became one of the favorite stories around the public safety office.