in the grip of Nika

Winter Storm Nika hasn’t been kind. The previous snowstorms have rendered Cincinnati and her environs all but bankrupt of ice, and the counties issued statements declaring that they only had enough ice to treat the main roads and highways, leaving most of the side-streets untouched. Tuesday night saw half an inch of ice coating the city, and my early morning drive downtown looked more like a snapshot of “civilized Hoth” than anything else. Downtown hadn’t been treated, and once I somehow managed to park (with much sliding and fishtailing in the process), I warmed up with coffee in the café and stood behind the bar watching cars sliding and doing 360 degree turn spins in the intersection of 6^th and Vine.

I’ve also set a lifetime record for trips and falls. My neighbors know me as “the guy who falls flat every time he tries to walk up to his apartment,” and I have bruises to prove it. I’ve developed a manner of walking on my heels to try and avoid falling, but it doesn’t work all the time, and once I start falling, since everything is ice, there’s really no stopping it. My facial expression doesn’t even change when I start going down. It’s just a part of how I move now.

As the temperatures warm up, driving on the highway is quite the treat. The highways were duly salted, so there haven’t been as many wrecks as you’d expect. The real fun comes when the sheets of ice on top of cars loosen and then flail up with the wind, twisting high and arcing through the air, smashing down on top of other cars in a shower of icy shards.

I keep telling myself this is good practice for my upcoming life in Wisconsin. I’m certainly hoping there’s more snow than ice up there, because I’d take four feet of snow over half an inch of ice any day. I’ve only gotten stuck in the ice once, and I’ve got to know my neighbors better by helping dig them out of the “ice trenches” caused by the snowplows aimlessly boxing cars in. It doesn’t seem like a big deal until you realize that the cars aren’t boxed in by drifts of snow but by drifts of ice, and these drifts turn into solid masses that you literally have to break apart with shovels or ice-picks. Those plastic ice scrapers simply don’t work.

Word is that there’s another super-storm coming this weekend.

At this point I’m just shrugging my shoulders.

And I can’t help but yearn for the cool, rainy Winter of ’11-’12.