#1. I have helped lots of people with frozen parking brakes this week. More cold is coming. For those of you who are not used to cold weather, DO NOT set your parking brake when you park. It will freeze to the drum, and cause you lots of grief the next day. A hair dryer will not be enough to thaw it out.
#2. If you are new to the site, and are commenting, you should read the rules. A few that I will remind you of now:
- If you work for a company like, oh, I don’t know, maybe Whole Foods, and comment under other names, I will out you. For more an example, see the Whole Foods thread.
- If you use a fake email address, the system may not let your post go through (it randomly checks them, and if they don’t resolve, deletes your comments).
- If you want to swear, keep it on the benign side. We’ll know what you mean.
#3. I hope you are all surviving the Arctic Storm 2008!
#4. I forgot to mention, in a recent email from PokPok, Andy says “Look for the opening of Ping, the new restaurant in Chinatown I am collaborating with John & Janet Jay and Kurt Huffman to build and run, sometime in late January…if all goes well of course.” I think that probably means April, but I’ll help swing a hammer if necessary.
Thank you Food dude for offering some helpful weather advice for drivers. It’s a exception to all the panic that the news stations are creating. Why don’t more people start offering tips on how to successfully get around in this (not so bad) weather instead of giving up entirely and remaining fearful? Anyway, you are doing your part.
Re: Arctic Storm 2008 – I don’t know why I drove to work today. Well, except for the fact that a snowy day is awfully pretty to see. In fact, I plan to slide down the hill into Portland tonight and find some place still open for a nice cozy dinner. :-)
Hmmm, I’m not sure that helping people what ain’t used to cold weather
get themselves out onto the roads counts as ‘public service’…
‘storm of the century’ and frozen brakes sounds to me like a reason to
stay home and work out the perfect hot toddy.
Speaking of the perfect hot toddy, a group of expats over here in the Far East sampled the Hot Buttered Rum recipe supplied by Lance Mayhew via FD on another post here…thumbs up! Even made with (shudder) Capitan Morgan’s (I know, I know, but it was the best money could buy at the import store) it was still quite tasty and warming! Give it a try!
I’ve made dozens of them from his recipe. Really quite wonderful! If you have lots of time, make your own butter for it too!
I deleted all the comments related to house flipping. The first one seemed benign, but after the reactions, I realized the first one may have just been baiting. Email address was also faked.
Really, none of them mattered. That’s not what this was about.
Some winter driving advice from someone who grew up in Maine:
- Slow down! If it’s cold enough to snow chances are it’s sticking to the streets and creating an ice condition. Your brakes don’t mean squat if you need to stop quickly. Especially on the streets where they don’t sand/salt/plow.
- Quit the tailgating! Is this something they teach/recommend out here? Leave a few car lengths between you and car in front of you when conditions are bad.
- Pump, not slam on your brakes. Coming up to a red light, or down a tricky hill? Brakes are ok, just nice and easy. Harsh application will cause you to slide and your abs to kick in (which is unpleasant enough).
- If you are sliding… don’t panic. Front wheel drive vehicles, you can steer out of it and correct, apply a little gas slowly. Fishtailing… slow application of the gas, let the weight of your front (heavy) end of your car do the work.
- Sliding backwards… try not to hit the curb (or a bus, another car, me, etc) as it won’t add much traction to you – your best bet on an icy slope is to aim for the area less compacted (icy). I’ll take the snow in the middle lane of a street over flattened treaded snow on a hill.
- Get behind a tractor trailer or other heavy vehicle and stay in their tracks. Their weight is blowing snow/water out of their path.
Keep it nice and easy… we all need to get there, and in bad weather, time IS NOT the essence.
Sorry, don’t mean to rant, but I saw some scary stuff out there today!
Yeah, Kris welcome to Portland snow FREAKOUT driving. The Army Corp of Engineers also has some great cold weather driving and car tips: http://www.nad.usace.army.mil/cold_weather_driving_tips.htm
I’ll take my icy weather tips from AAA:
http://www.aaapublicaffairs.com/Main/Default.asp?CategoryID=3&SubCategoryID=55
If you want to demolish a US city, I’m sure the Army Corps would be much obliged.
Ummm…some of us have to set our parking brakes or our cars will slide out into the street!! ;o) I’m not having problems with mine freezing anyway, thank goodness!