Love, Love, Love: Snow Tires

I love, love, love my new snow tires. All $535 of them. My car is an excellent city car. It gets good gas mileage and handles famously on dry pavement, which is perfect in Salt Lake City about 70% of the time (I made that number up—no research was involved). The other 30% of the time, my car freaks out. It’s light and front-wheel driven. This makes for much sliding all over the road. Yes, before the snow tires, I was the person driving on the road that you thought was ridiculous for how overly paranoid and cautious she was in the snow, but it was out of necessity—my car in all-weather tires would slide half way across the road if I ran over a snowball. This winter, I went all out and purchased the full set of snow tires. Yes, watching all that money come out of my account was painful, but the peace of mind is worth it. This recent snowstorm (as I write this, road crews are still cleaning up after it) was a breeze. The only thing I had to worry about were my fellow commuters who do not have snow tires. Like the Toyota 4-Runner directly in front of me that was slipping all over the place—I kept my distance.

Highlights of snow tire bliss:
· I changed snowy lanes where it’s usually safest to stay in the grooves of the car in front of you.
· I turned corners without the back end overly sliding the other direction (which is a teensy bit disappointing, because sometimes that’s fun)
· I made it up the huge hill to my house (previously I’ve had to leave my car at the bottom overnight while it thought about what it did)
· And this morning I made it out of the drifts created by the wind and uncleaned by the non-existence of snowplows on my road.

Indeed, I am quite pleased. Snow Tires, I could kiss you.