Four-door Florida: Battling the Cleveland sludge

The word “sludgy” best describes the weather on the days when the first white droppings of any winter in Cleveland arrive. It’s usually not snowy, because the temperature on these days tend to teeter-totter around 34 degrees and alternately freezes and thaws the falling rains. It’s just grossly icy and hail-y…leaving gray-white slop all over the landscape.

Roads are atrocious when it is sludgy. A thin layer of ice masquerading as rainwater blankets the roads sending unsuspecting and overconfident drivers into slip sliding spin outs. Stopping smoothly is nearly impossible, and even driving in a straight line is difficult.

This morning was definitely sludgy. On my drive to work, I saw a man in a mid-90’s Cadillac begin to fish-tail wildly. He was driving along down the highway when his back end suddenly jetted out to one side. A semi-truck in the next lane clipped his back end and sent him spinning off like a cyclone into the highway divider after his car did four complete revolutions. Luckily, the driver exited the car unscathed, and the damage to the car was surprisingly minimal.

I am anxious to see how my new car handles the Cleveland winter. One HUGE upgrade over my previous car is the automatic starter that I have on my key chain. I now can start my car from the comforts of my room by simple pressing a button. I can then get dressed, brush my teeth, and when I get into the car, I will be sitting in 75 degrees of blasting heat – like a four-door Florida.

Take that, sludge.

This can't be Cleveland

Blue skies, sun, 70 degrees. This can't be Cleveland.

A very un-Novemberlike day made for a very un-Clevelandesque landscape. It's usually frigid and gray and dead all over by this time each year. In the winter, we can go weeks without seeing the sun. In fact, they say that only Seattle rivals Cleveland when it comes to cloudy days, and winter is especially sunless.

Winter gets to you after a while, and I can sense that weather and its blah skies are just on the doorstep.

How perfect it would have been to follow that sun west today- just keep driving until I hit New Mexico or Arizona, hell maybe even continue on to the San Juaquin Valley or some magical place like that. It's been three years since the last time I wandered West. And I miss the excitement of getting in the car and driving until your legs cramp up.