My Yaktrax

I wanted to walk from the laundromat to the pizzeria today.. a short walk - but a few steps away from the car, I verified that doc martens and ice do not mix. ...ended up driving the car LITERALLY to the end of a small strip mall to make it to the pizzeria intact.

So - tonight I bought the Yaktrax. They aren't the strap-on ice-cleats that are also available but rather rubber webbing with coils of steel... 'tire chains' in a way for your shoes.

http://www.yaktrax.com/ProductsWalker.aspx

Driving around I watched other cars slip around and felt my traction control engaging here and there (interesting hoping that your car stops before you DO slide into the intersection)... but yet - unlike in places where you would take that as a sign to go home and just do those errands on a day where the roads were clear... I adopted (what I imagine is familiar here) the fatalism that it won't be any better til late spring... after all I think it MIGHT even have gotten above freezing here today and it didn't make much of a dent on those areas where traffic hadn't cleared the roads (which is all parking lots and the winding Yak Road that turns and goes up hill to Yak Estates).

So you might as well stay out and write postcards at Obama headquarters (beer and postcards part deux). Another lovely aspect of the GRAVEL approach to dealing with snow and ice (besides the 1-2 windshield repair/replacement minimum) is grocery carts. Pushing the cart over parking lots seems almost like pushing a shopping cart over cobblestones or gravel.