Wife’s Introduction to the Ice Scraper
Or just some weird Alaskan Winter thoughts . . .
Winter has slowly made its way across
I surprised my wife this year and bought her a remote auto starter as her Christmas present. She has wanted one for many years now but every time I was ready to have one installed it seemed she was ready to trade vehicles. She has not really traded all that often but I wanted to make sure that she would keep a rig long enough to make it worthwhile in the long run.
I had sort of played up the fact lately with her that I was sure she had no idea one was forthcoming any time soon. I had even gone so far as giving her a introduction to the Ice Scraper. It is a handy tool that many use here to quickly be on their way after just a small amount of effort.
It was, I believe, two weekends before Christmas when she stepped out side around 11 am and realized there was a layer of ice on her windshield. Now, it was a modest layer of ice with a small dusting of snow on top of things. Her initial action of turning on the windshield wipers was futile as they were frozen to the glass and did not move. Surely there was something simple here that needed to be done, but she definitely didn't know what that was. She humbly if not aggravated . . . walked into the house to ask me what exactly needed to be done to make her rig drivable without waiting a half hour to thaw things out. She controlled her anger and frustration by asking in that soft, kind of "little-ole-me" voice, secretly hoping I wouldn’t come outside and say; "Are you freaking kidding me?" She was lucky though, being the gentleman that I am, said "Ah ha . . . the ice scraper . . . " and proceeded to walk down the stairs ahead of her indicating that she should follow. We went outside and I quickly pulled the ice scraper out from under the seat where it had been waiting all of this season to be urged into service. I noticed she did the novice foo-pa of turning the wipers on when they were iced frozen solidly to the windshield. She had been told not to do that again or they'll burn out, but could add wiper fluid to the mix as I put in a Rain-X mixture which helps most of the time but can sometimes make more of a mess.
In retrospect, it worked out well as she had no idea what she would receive in a few weeks and this little incident all seemed totally reasonable with perhaps something she could have been able to figure out through deductive reasoning. I won’t say that she is not the sharpest tack in the shed because she is pretty good about figuring out many things . . . as I am called on to repair this vacuum cleaner or put these blinds up.
She likes to keep a clean rig even in winter so now I can move on to her newest problem, what to do when the car door ices shut . . . after that car wash at minus ten below zero . . . but oh my . . . her rig looks awfully pretty but it sure would be nice to open the doors.
Little hint to those of us who live in Arctic conditions . . . if you wash your car or rig . . . do it on the way home and not on the way to work so it can sit in a heated garage as it dries and not sitting there for eight hours freezing all openings shut. Even that new auto-start will not make that much of a difference if the doors will not thaw for a couple of hours.
Ice
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