Monday, February 12, 2007

A Most Unusual Washing

Over the last few week’s we have had a handful of storms delivering 1-2 inches of snow each time. The temperature has not risen above freezing in that time, and thus we now have a very dirty, collections of nasty slushy, snow conglomeration. Needless to say my automobile looks most miserably disgusting.

This past Saturday, even though it was still well below freezing, I decided to get a car wash. It was a very pretty day, and the weather wasn’t calling for more snow for at least half a week. Wanting to get the nastiness, especially all the corrosive salt off my car I decided it was worth bearing the cold for.

Apparently, this was a common thought, as there was quite the line at the car wash. Three lines extended into three separate automatic washers. I choose the one on the far right. As we nudged closer, we noticed that the walls of each washing stall were covered in ice. We also laughed as we saw large ice sickles hanging off the washing lines.

Finally there was only one car before us and nudged our way up to the pay-machine. Inserting our cashola we watched the car in front of us get a wash.

Interestingly, the pre-wash soak part seemed to not be working. Little soap bubbled sort of dropped from the machine, but the car was certainly not getting a good sudzing. That doesn’t look good, we thought, but what could we do? We were trapped in a stampede of cars.

A knock came upon my window and a fellow stood there telling me the machine was definitely broken.

“Pull through,” he said, and advised me to get into another line. Pull through I did and drove around to wait in line a second time. For my trouble he gave me double the cash I had originally paid.

Waited again, we did and finally got the car washed. While being soaked and washed we laughed as the mirrors and back windshield quickly froze over, before being washed again, thus wiping away the ice. The end came, and I slowly drove through the dryer. Not slow enough, it seems, for when we parked at Kroger, the entire car was caked in a thin layer of ice.

It eventually did melt, and get blown off, but that was definitely the most unusual washing my car has ever seen.

3 comments:

JS said...

but was the car nice and clean under the ice layer?

Mat Brewster said...

It was a decent wash. About as good a one as you can get from those automated washers anyways.

Of course it snowed again last night so it will be filthy again soon.

mullinz8 said...

Once upon my youth my mother would get car washes early on winter mornings. There wasn’t a dryer so on the way back to where ever we were going the car would freeze over. It was always really cool to see this happen and something of a fond memory.

On the subject of winter driving conditions I have always loved driving in the snow at night because I thought it looked like going through light speed.