GOGS...Grumpy Old Gits Society..

I'm sick of seeing "Beast from the east 2" scaremongering headlines on electronic media.

They started in October! :grump: Not a week has gone by since when there there haven't been "Weeks of sub-zero temperatures", "Deep snow" and "Country will grind to a halt" predictions.

So far, this has been yet another "winter that never was". It has been milder than last winter. OK I know there's plenty of time for proper winter to really hit the UK but, where I am, currently we have a moderate gale blowing (force 7) from the north-west with an above-seasonal-average temperature of 10deg. IIRC, I've had to scrape frost from my car twice this winter, and I'm out early at least 5 times a week.

I wish someone would explain why the media need to spout this rubbish. They can't even use the "because it sells papers" excuse anymore.

I'm really miffed. Just oop north in Europe they have snow up to the armpits and what do we have? A light frost

I like snow. I like being out in it and I like driving in it. Winter isn't winter without the stuff. It's hardly dropped below freezing here, usually warm as toast at about 3 to 5 degrees.

gus3049 said:

I like snow. I like being out in it and I like driving in it.

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Me too, but we don't get so much now. I miss it.

As lads, my brother and I lived at the highest point of Sussex so would often get snow and ice when elsewhere was just wet. For a time, we both had RS Escorts and whilst I could stay with him in the dry on a circuit, I could never keep up in the snow. No elder brother likes being beaten by his younger one, so I bought a set of Colway snow tyres to redress the balance. That was in 1982 I think. We didn't have enough snow that year, nor the following and my tyres languished unused in my garage for three years until the Escort was written off. Climate change certainly buggered up our fun...

My brother went on to be a successful racing driver and often credits not only our hours in the snow for teaching him car control, but countless childhood hours driving slot cars on our track in the loft at home.

Proper snow and a proper first car: my rusty, leaky 1600GT Ford Cortina with, for weight minimising reasons, no rear seats, sound deadening or other creature comforts. Dodgy camera work courtesy of my brother, aged 14 when these were taken. The police turned a blind eye to us in those days and let us have our fun. What's the likelihood of being allowed to do that these days?!

I grew up driving on snow well north of New York City then went to college in western Massachusetts - the small town that hosted my college rarely plowed, one simply became accustomed to driving on packed snow from November to late March. After a stint in California, I spent 6 years in Louisville, Kentucky. Although the snowfall was far less than New England, it did snow every year and every year the populace was surprised as evidenced by their lack of weather driving skills. Thirteen years near Chicago and on the lee side of Lake Michigan taught me what winter was really all about. One year in Indiana we were gifted with 96" of snow in January alone!

Where I live now (mid-Atlantic) it snows even less than it did in Louisville but the effect is as great if not greater. 3 to 4" of snow will completely paralyze Washington DC.

Aside from the FWD cars I have been running for the past 13 years, one of my more capable bad weather drives was a 1953 Sunbeam Talbot (yes, like the ones that acquitted themselves so well in the Coupe des Alpes) - nothing special in the chassis but a combination of about 50/50 weight distribution and narrow (5:50 X 16") tires. My Dunlop "dog bone" shod Healey 3 litre didn't do badly, either. On more than one occasion, I drove through snow deep enough to leave a clear impression of drive train and exhaust in the snow behind me.

A real danger on the road these days? - drivers who assume that the superior traction of their massive 4WD conveyances will accordingly provide enhanced braking performance.

All that said, I find that, when the weather turns dodgy these days, I am increasingly inclined to stay in - not because my snow driving skills have withered but because I am put off by the risks of a fall while walking to or from the car. I don't "bounce" as well as I once did.

EM

Ecurie Martini said:

I don't "bounce" as well as I once did.

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All this talk of snow and bouncing brings to mind an evening some winters ago.

In 1999 I failed to bounce sufficiently, broke my back and have been in a manual wheelchair ever since, paralysed from the chest down. A nuisance, but not insurmountable. You'd think...

Come said winter and we've several inches of snow on the ground, it's almost midnight so the roads will be empty, I've a car sitting on the drive, a full tank of petrol and some free time, the wife's away for a few days, the children are away at university, so a couple of hours hooning around in the car is too tempting an opportunity to pass up.

From the front door of my house across my drive to the closest part of my car is about twelve feet on asphalt. The driveway is as near as makes no difference level, perhaps one or two degrees uphill from the house, but no more. It's in the lee of the house and partly sheltered from the snow, so I have a distance of about ten feet that's covered in a couple of inches or so and which I have to traverse in my wheelchair. Could I do it? No chance. I tried and tried and tried, but I couldn't make even a foot of progress. As soon as I hit the snow I lost all grip and no matter how gently I pushed my wheels, the tyres broke traction and span uselessly. Tread-less tyres, you see. Treaded ones just shred my hands.

Perhaps a fast approach would help, thought I, although it would mean leaving the front door wide open if I successfully reached the car. No worries. Burglars don't operate at midnight on a snowy evening, do they? So, mustering all the speed I could down my hallway, probably a heady three or four miles an hour, I tried once more. Success! Of sorts...

I'd left the house ok and, indeed, had travelled about four feet through the snow before grinding to a halt, but now I was stuck. Wheelspin precluded forward movement and, a minor miscalculation on my behalf, the one or two degree downhill slope wasn't sufficient to help me reverse back through the snow to the front door. F**k!! By now, I'd expended so much energy that I felt as if I was in the tropics, not stuck outside midway between my car and house in sub-zero temperatures, dressed only in a long sleeved t-shirt and jeans.

So the quandary. Whatever I decide, car or house, I'll have to chuck myself off my chair onto the ground and drag myself there. So I sat and pondered. Car: fun, warm and a snowy opportunity I don't get very often, or house: dull, the wimp's choice, a missed chance that I might not get again for several years. Car? House? Car? House. The wimp's way out. Still bugs me to this day!

David, I love your spirit!