The Joys of Black Ice

Nothing like a day of snow / rain / sleet / standing water / and black ice to welcome in the latter part of the week!

If it wasn't bad enough that there were gross puddles of slush everywhere yesterday, most of indeterminate depth, the entire city froze over come nightfall.

Things must have gone from bad to awful sometime between 9PM and 11PM. I came home from the gym, parked in a spot quite close to my home, surprisingly available at that time of day, and sat myself down on the couch for a few hours.

That's when I began reading the Facebook entries of my Bostonian friends slipping in falling.

Lovely.

Rosie and I went out for our final walk around 11PM.

She's certainly getting her dose of extended ground ice and snow this year, and the resulting physiological issues. We went through a bout of limber tail a few weeks ago, when the sudden change in temperature and snow caused her to not be able to wag her tail normally for about 48 hours.

Last night, she learned that snow is slippery. Granted she has four legs to steady her, but she was sliding a bit at first. Mostly, though, the ice kind of caused her to freak out. She was much more jittery, with sudden bursts of random acceleratory energy.

A probably-70-pound-dog (we'll learn in a few weeks) pulling me along the ice isn't a game of dexterity I was hoping to play at 11 PM last night.

After a brief block of walking on crunchy snow and dry parts of the sidewalk, and after watching cars back down E. 7th Street after failed attempts to drive that incline, we retreated back home. The one area of blacktop that we crossed was absolutely covered in ice. I basically let her pull me across.

But, I didn't fall. I'm hoping I'm not speaking too soon.

I was fully expecting a morning of ice scraping and frozen doors / car handles, but thankfully my parking spot was drenched in sun this morning. Not a single scrape needed!