Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Life lesson #4,823.72

When it’s 16°F (-9°C) out, be sure to warm up your car before you take it through one of those automatic car washes.

One of the benefits of working at the Chevron is that I get a free supreme car wash every week.  So when I got off work tonight I decided to run the car through the wash.  The supreme runs around your car twice spraying it down with soap, lets it soak for 60 seconds, high power rinses twice, wax, rinse and finally a low power spot-free rinse.  It also uses heated water for all these.

I could tell I was in trouble before the first round of soap was done.  My car was covered with a sheet of soapy ice.  The second time around simply added a second layer of ice.  I turned on the wipers and they just slid right over the sheet.  Nada.  Quick, turn on the rear-window deicer and the front heat.  High powered rinse comes around melts it a little bit.  I turn on the wipers for the second rinse and that breaks up the ice a little bit.  With the heater, deicer and wipers (both front and back) going through the rest of the cycles it cleared things off enough to see where I was going driving back to the front of the store.  (The pictures shows the frozen soap-ice that still remained on the passenger door window after the wash was over).  I went in, warned my coworker that she should let her car warm up before she washed hers, and got another wash to get the rest of the soap off the car.

Second time around, when the car had warmed up, worked a lot better.

I also want to give a shout out to the guy in this other picture for the super-duper excellent job he did of cleaning the snow off his car.  Bravo, dude.  Makes me feel incredibly safe knowing that there are people like you driving around on these wintery days.  And I suppose you talk on your phone while driving, too.

6 comments:

A Paperback Writer said...

Oh my.
Sorry, but DUH. That was funny.

Max Sartin said...

That's the beauty of my blog. Even when I do something stupid, at least I can make people laugh with it.

Mustang Sally said...

LOL Actually Max, you were really lucky. Ever see a windshield crack from trying to defrost it with warm water because the defroster wasn't working? I have, and it's not a pretty sight, or sound for that matter.

I'm sooo glad I don't have to deal with snow anymore.

A Paperback Writer said...

My white car (previous to this one I have now) was once ice-encased, but it wasn't my doing.
It was a January day with temperatures much like the ones we've been having this week, and we'd just finished an academic game. At the time, Pepsi was still sponsoring us, and we'd had cans of pop donated. The custodian had put them in ice in a large, new garbage can, and it had melted into that icy soup one expects. The game was in the auditorium and when the pop was all gone, our history mentor told a group of boys to go empty the several gallons of ice water outside. "ANYWHERE outside?" one of them asked.
She should've realized that meant trouble, but she was distracted and told them, "Yes, just go empty it."
They emptied it. Right over my car roof. Naturally, it froze solid. I had to scrape like crazy to get into the car and clear the windshield.

Max Sartin said...

Oh man, that couldn't have been too much fun.

21 Wits said...

Oh funny, (guy's car) but really not...there are too many of them on the road, and if you get too close much of their snow can suddenly come flying onto your car! Grrrrr.....didn't anybody raise this person on.....anything?