"Grimly Curmudgeon" wrote in message
...
We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the
drugs began to take hold. I remember Pete Verdon
d saying something
like:

Mum says she's been getting evil looks (of the "you're a dangerous
nutter who's about to kill themselves" variety) in the recent snow, as
she tools past people on her studded tyres and Russian driving skills :-)

As a driver who was brought up in snowy Scottish conditions, I was
utterly amazed at the outraged response to me sailing past a slow
doddering trilby-hatted Volvo driver near Northampton.
There was I having the temerity to actually overtake some pillar of the
community who was driving 'safely' at 25mph on the inside lane of a
wide-open dual carriageway with absolutely no traffic on the outside
lane and no tyre tracks on the 2" snow, either.

He was sounding his horn and shaking his fist at me as if I'd just raped
his dog.

People darn sarf can't drive in snow. It's just one those facts of life.
When I lived in Aberdeen you got used to driving in snow pretty damn quick
or you ended up in a ditch. Back in 1978, or maybe 1979, when I was still
living near London we had quite a bad winter and the roads were snowed up
for days. I was still getting about on a motorbike back then and I drove in
to work in appaling conditions from Chorleywood to Harrow without any issues
when everyone with cars was crashing like crazy. One guy at work came in
Monday with his car bent out of shape down both sides. He'd set out from
home on Sunday morning to buy a newspaper and slid off the road within 50
yards at the first bend into a parked milk float and crumpled the driver's
side of the car. I kid you not, he left a note on the milk float, went to
the shop, bought the paper and slid off the road into the same milk float
again on the way back and crumpled the passenger side of the car. Laugh, I
nearly did.

Anyway one really bad morning my manager phoned up and asked me if I wanted
a lift into work in his Cavalier given how bad the roads were. So he picked
me up, we got all the way to Harrow bar the last half a mile which was down
a steep hill which he entered too fast, (too fast only being about 20 mph
but still) couldn't slow down and skidded into the back of a car waiting at
the foot of it and stuffed the front end of his car.

I thought bugger this for a game of soldiers and went back to riding the
bike in. It was interesting to say the least riding a road bike on road
tyres on packed snow but I never fell off and I reckon if you can manage
that then driving a car in the same conditions ought to be piece of ****. I
eventually graduated to cars, a MK1 Escort estate in the first instance, and
managed to get around in deep snow up even fairly steep hills by the simple
expedient of pulling the handbrake half on to act as a poor man's limited
slip diff. That stops one tyre from spinning madly if it loses grip while
the other one drags you up. All you need is a high gear, not too much
throttle and try and maintain momentum.
--
Dave Baker