Ice Ice Baby

Some times, in Alaska, when the temperature drops low enough (say under 20 degrees F) a kind of frost forms all over your car. From what I can tell, there is no moisture in the air that first clings to the windows and then turns to ice. It simply develops. Very strange and very annoying.

Today I had to drop off some late time sheets at work, and as usual I was running late. The office would be closing in twenty minutes and I was supposed to be meeting my future sister-in-law at Fred Meyer. So I gathered everything up, swept my damp hair up into a bun, and ran out the door. And much to my chagrin I find that my windshield, back window, and drivers side window are completely covered in this dumb frost stuff. Now normally I would start my car, take three minutes and scrape it all off so that I can see where I am going. However, when my fiance was in town (he normally lives nine hours north), he was using the car and took out my ice scraper and left it in his parents garage. I've been meaning to stop by and pick it up, but I keep forgetting. So here I am, needing to get over to the office, which means I don't have time to scrape the windshield with a credit card. (Which is apparently a great trick in 30 below weather when the INSIDE of your windows get frosted over.) So what I do is this... I start my car, and back out of the driveway. Then I shift into first, turn on my defroster as high as I can, and lean over in a hunched position. This way I can see out of the tiny line at the bottom where there isn't any frost.

I drive like this all the way over to the office. Which is really only five minutes away, but if you have ever driven in alaska in the winter, five minutes can be a dangerous thing. First off, the more rural roads are white because they are covered in compacted snow and ice which blends well with the frost covering your windows. Second, there are crazy trucks who think they are invincible and snowmachiners doing crazy things on the side of the road. And third, a moose may decide to cross the road in front of you and if you are focusing too much on not accidentally driving into the other lane of traffic (and/or the ditch) because you can't really see through the windshield... it might be hard to spot them.

By the time I got to the office, my car had heated up enough that half of my windshield was defrosted. I ran in, took care of my stuff, came back out all ready to head to Freddies when I remembered something. I needed to pick up the disk with the pictures I needed to print out at freddies on it. The disk was at my fiance's parents house. So I leap in my car, finally able to sit up properly and see, drive over to his parents, race inside, grab the disk, jump back into my car, zoom down the road toward the store, get half way there and remember.... CRAP!!! The ice scrapper!!! So lets hope there isn't any frost on my windshield in the morning. I don't want to have to deal with that crap before I go to work.