You know you live in the Great White North when....

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  1. You scoff at six inches of snow.

  2. You look out the window and see blowing snow and think, "Goodie, that means there'll be less snow to clean off of the car!"

  3. You can still read the road signs through the half inch of snow crusted on them at the very beginning of the snow storm.

  4. Someone rings your doorbell at 7:30 in the morning on a Saturday to ask if you want them to shovel your sidewalk for you.

I realised last night that I'm still very much a novice driver. I had a performance to get to in one of the out laying suburbs of Syracuse and the weather was pretty nasty. It was the worst weather I'd ever had to drive in. I fishtailed right out of the driveway. As I fishtailed my way along the usual back route out of our neighbourhood and onto a main road from our neck of the woods to the highway I realised that perhaps driving on back roads that are always the last to be plowed and steep hills in the mild of a storm with blowing snow and near white out conditions was maybe not a good idea. Fortunately there weren't too many people on the road so I could drive as slowly as I wanted. It was still tough though because I couldn't see any of the lane markings. I either had to guess where a lane was or follow the vehicle in front of me.

Earlier in the day I was out doing errands and had a few moments of road rage when I saw people driving in the blowing snow without their lights on. I was tempted to roll down the window and yell at them to turn their lights on before they caused a crash. Instead I opted to get away from them as quickly as possible.

Anyway, traction control, anti-lock breaks, and counter steering are your best friends when driving in the winter. As is slowing down. My winter driving motto is, better late to where I'm going than right on time to the ER (or morgue).

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