December 14, 2013: Need New Tires

Dominica and I were up before eight at the Hilton Garden Inn in Norwalk. Dominica got up and looked outside and was dismayed to discover that it had snowed during the night and was still snowing. This isn’t good. My car, the Chevy Spark, is bad in snow and Dominica’s Acadia’s tires are in terrible shape and going to be really bad on snow – which they have never seen before. So we got up earlier than we had wanted to, got checked out and got on the road as quickly as was easy to do so that we would have maximum time to deal with the drive. It was probably about eight thirty when we set out for the forty plus mile trek from Norwalk to Peekskill.

We were unsure of what path to take back to Peekskill as the highway would probably be better for the Acadia and the backroads probably better for the Spark. I have had really good luck on the back roads over the past few weeks, including in the snow, and there is expected to be basically no traffic today so we decided to give that a try. Dominica followed me as I took her on the complicated route back to the house.

We had assumed that Connecticut and New York would have been out clearing the roads. Boy were we wrong. Not only had no plows been out but basically no traffic in the direction that we were heading. In some cases we could see that the other, oncoming, lane was well driven but ours was lucky to have seen a car, let alone a plow.

The drive was very stressful. We had to creep along to keep control of the roads. The worst part came when we took Parade Hill, in New Canaan, between routes 123 and 124. Going up Parade Hill we had someone drive less than ten miles per hour in front of us which nearly brought me to a halt causing me to lose all of my momentum and the Spark could barely hold enough traction to make it to the top of the hill. Dominica was even less fortunate and looking in my rearview I saw her come to a stop on the hill, unable to move.

I pulled into a driveway and ran back down the hill and took over driving for her. I had her get in the passenger seat. With my additional weight and making half a dozen runs at the hill I was finally able to get the Acadia to the top of it. That was ridiculous. There is no doubt, we have to get new tires on this car this weekend. There is no other option. It is not safe to use this vehicle any more, not in winter. So now we have that to deal with this weekend.

All in all, the slow drive back to Peekskill took about two hours! Dominica went straight home. I stopped in Yorktown Heights at Daily Bagel to get a dozen bagels for the family for the weekend. One of the joys of being downstate. Best bagels anywhere.

It was around ten thirty when we got home and the girls were awake.

Today’s projects including fixing network issues and, not surprisingly, figuring out what to do about new tires for the Acadia. We finally found tires that we liked at a reasonable price at Sears. Dominica ordered some all weather Continentals that came in around nine hundred dollars that Sears will install for us late tomorrow morning.

This evening Liesl and Luciana wanted to introduce their grandfather to Doctor Who, their favourite show. So they brought him down to the basement and had him spend the entire evening watching the “first” season of it starting from the first episode and running through the fifth (which we had to make it through as it was a two parter.) He liked it a lot and is now hooked on it.

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