Winter
About half the country is under some sort of extreme winter weather advisory. That includes lots of places where the slightest snow fall or ice sheet produces panic and highway pile ups because folks are simply not accustomed to dealing with such cold and their rear-wheel drive cars are not well-equipped to handle the slick conditions. Here in northern Connecticut we are used to the snow and the ice, which is why lots of people here have Subarus with front-wheel drive and a four-wheel drive option. Our two, with 105,000 and 208,000 miles respectively, have seen their share of storms. With any luck we will hang on to them until they reach the quarter-million mile mark, at which point we’ll consider replacing the worn one. We have a long downhill driveway, 170 feet from the road and sloped at about a steady seven percent. When it ices up or gets snowed in it’s usually easy to negotiate in our cars once we have been dug out by our regular snow plow service. But there is a lot of unevenness to the surface, a condition that is getting worse as freeze-thaw cycles have caused it to buckle over the years. As...Read more