Saturday, November 17, 2018

Putting the New Car to the Test

No one likes driving in horrible weather, right?

I mean, I've been driving for twenty five winters now, so it's not new to me. I've made some conscious decisions to risk a drive home, I've had some incidents where I haven't been given a choice, and of course, I've been caught off guard.

For the past year, maybe two, I've dreaded it. My car was not great, and for the past year I've probably needed tires and brakes pretty badly. We live at the base of a mountain in a pretty hilly area, and to get to our road, you either have to drive up or down a pretty major hill.

Anyway, the past week we heard that we'd be getting our first "plowable" snow (always fun when it's before Thanksgiving). We knew it would be Thursday evening. Dance was canceled, and theoretically we had a completely open evening. Unfortunately, we also had a wake to go to. Adam and I decided to go right at the beginning. It wasn't snowing yet, my sister was willing to watch the girls, and we figured we would be home before anything substantial actually happened.

All good theories.

Well it ended up being a perfect storm, so to speak. It started early, it was much heavier than expected, and it got bad fast. And not only did it come down quickly and hard, but it hit that badly right at rush hour. When we left the wake at 5:00, there were several inches on my car. People were trying to get home to beat the snow, which meant that an early start of the snow trapped everyone.

And then the twenty minute drive took well over an hour. Cars were stuck, cars had slid off the road, there were fender benders and no room for any emergency vehicles to help out or any plows to start. The longer this went on, the worse the roads got, and the more cars started not be able to handle it.

And because we knew it was a risk, we took my car. And because my car is still new and Adam hasn't driven it much, I drove. I was fine with that at first, but as I saw how bad things were getting, I started getting really nervous that my new car was going to end up a casualty of the bad weather and timing. It was the first test.

And let me say...Go Subaru!

When you have a car that can handle it, it takes a lot of the stress away. I mean, not all, because there were still plenty of cars on the road to watch out for. But my car didn't slide, stopped when I wanted it to, and handled all the hills like a boss.

Will I be seeking out snowy drives? No. Lots of no. But it definitely makes me feel better that I know I've got a car who can handle the winter.
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