The Drive

Why would anyone spend a moment of their time writing about or describing the drive from the road the live on to their home? A very reasonable question only last Autumn for my European audience. But after a winter featuring the alien conditions of snow and ice which didn’t melt for several days or even weeks the question has attained some relevance for you and retains its utter relevance for Mainers like us.

Our drive, like most others in the world, runs from our road to our home. That is where the simplicity ends. Our drive has to be an all weather feature or what our friends and neighbours term, suitable for four season use. Okay, I hear you say, so you have to drive on it in winter, still not entirely sure what the big deal is here.

I will list the characteristics which make our drive an occasional headache for us, especially in the winter. Firstly our house is approximately 50 feet above the level of the road. But even before that is taken into account our road is sloping steeply from the direction we most commonly enter it.

We get snow in Maine every winter, and from early January to mid March it lies on the ground. Last winter we received about 11 feet in total, the average is about 16 feet for here. The North of the state gets up to fifty feet each winter. Given that this is the reality of our Winter the community, local and State Governmental agencies are all geared up for snow clearance. So throughout each storm (the local term for a snowfall) all the roads are snow ploughed. Our drive on the other hand is private property and we have to have it plough ourselves. Many families do it themselves either by hand or with a snow blower. Our drive is about 400 feet long and those two options are simply impractical. We have to have ours ploughed and we hire someone to do it for us. He rarely comes during a storm however, unless it lasts more than 12 hours, which is unusual.

The schools don’t make their students brave the roads either to or from school during storms and so cancel school at short notice. The famous ‘snow day’; when the boys were much younger, and Edwina and I were working, that was a nightmare but that is not directly relevant to this discussion. But if you are in employment you are expected to turn up except for the really severe storms. In my job my patients’ illnesses don’t have snow days so I do have to go in, as many patients determinedly make their way in to see me.

This means that me, and occasionally Edwina, are confronted with a trip home in snow. Given that the roads are ploughed and one has experience of driving in snow getting to the bottom of our drive is the easy part. Once we get home the hard part begins.

As we come up our road to the entrance to the drive we are either gunning the engine to get up our road or keeping it in low gear and creeping down our road. The drive runs at an approximate 130 degree angle from the road if you are coming up our road or about a 50 degree angle if you are coming down it. This means that you have to lose all your speed to get onto the drive which will have some snow on it, sometimes a foot of snow. So now you are on the drive at low speed . Now you want to gain some speed and traction to get up to the house and the garage. At first the drive is relatively flat for about 200 feet and at first glance one might think great, gun the car to gain momentum for the climb up to the house. Unfortunately the flat part is slightly S shaped and so the driver can’t gain too much speed as the faster you go the less grip you have for the turns.

So you have managed to get up to about 10 miles per hour on the S shaped flat part of the drive. Why only that low speed? Because as the drive starts to get steep it also turns sharply to the left. Too much speed and you end up on the lawn, too little speed and you can’t get up the hill. But what about four wheel drive I hear you enquire? Good question, and it most certainly helps but if the snow has fallen on ice or the snow is thick and heavy all four wheels struggle for grip.

We now have all three of our vehicles with four wheel drive; previously our people carrier (van in local parlance) was front wheel drive and heavy. I could not get it up the drive about two times a winter. I sold it this summer and I’m excited to see how my new vehicle will fare this upcoming winter.

Meanwhile we return to the snowy drive. It turns sharply uphill and to the left and you manage to make it up that. Surely that is game over. Sadly not. We have to get the car into the garage otherwise the plough man may hit it and/or it may get stuck in the snow leading to many minutes spent digging it out after the storm is over. At the end of the steep section we are confronted by a sharp 90 degree turn to the left followed by an equally sharp 90 degree turn to the right to get into the garage. And the drive slopes up moderately to get into the garage.

So our intrepid driver has gone through the S-bend, the sharp turn, the uphill section and now has to negotiate a quick left right turn all with enough speed to get up the hill, a low enough speed to make the final two turns and with enough speed then to drive up into the garage. It is quite a challenge.

I was going to write this blog as a “how could I make my drive the worst possible winter driving experience” format. And at this point you can see why. And when you only get to practice this about 8 times a year and mostly in an eight week period of the year one gets out of practice very quickly. So far we have not damaged any vehicles or buildings doing this but that could always change.

The costs of re-routing the drive or moving the garage are prohibitive (20 thousand dollars or more) so we are stuck with our winter obstacle course. Please wish us luck for this season.

Until next time,

Gavin