The past twenty two years in Seattle have reduced me to a bit of a wimp when it comes to snow driving. When I was a kid back in Des Moines we used to hide behind snow drifts and when a car passed we’d hustle out and grab the back bumper for a ride. We called it bumper sliding or hookey bobbing. I remember once we went snowmobiling and my dad was driving a pick-up with the sled in the back and I rode the entire way just holding onto the tailgate – totally normal in 1978, completely crazy in 2010. My point is that in order to slide behind a car the roads would have to be pretty darn slick, and we thought nothing of driving on those roads.
I remember mom carting us to school in this 1974 Chevy Impala station wagon, you couldn’t design a worse snow car, but every morning off we went. When I got my license we used to go out on icy nights specifically for the ice. We didn’t avoid it we looked for it. Today I have a Subaru Outback – the consummate snow car – and I find myself inching along, nervous on any hill. On the one hand you could say I’ve grown wiser, on the other you could argue I’m more chicken.
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