March 14, 2008

In much of the United States today—the middle Friday of March—the weather outside is miserable. Cold air from the North Pole, and the biting northerly winds that bring it, surround your home and the garage where your friend, your treasure, your Corvette is safely stored.

The weather forecast that you hear or read for tomorrow and the rest of the weekend is no more encouraging: Partly cloudy. If you live in most of the northern Continental U.S., as well as in much of Canada, it means you just might see some sunshine. But, if you live in any of the snow belts along the Great Lakes, partly cloudy means that you’ll be shoveling up six to eight inches of “partly cloudy” before you can get your daily driver out the driveway, into the sea of brine and grit that your hometown’s streets have become.

You remember that, on Groundhog Day, the prediction by the nearest reference-standard woodchuck was for six more weeks of basketball on TV.

But you’re a day closer to getting your Vette out of storage than you were yesterday, when it looked like this coldest-in-almost-a-decade winter would never end. And tomorrow, you’re a day closer still.

Before you know it, the weather’s nastiness will work to your benefit. The foggy days to come will be when a shot of warm air blows in from the south, causing the snow to melt and the moisture-laden air becomes saturated with water vapor. Under the shroud of a Steel Cities Gray-colored sky, the snowpack begins its final retreat into the ground, clearing a path into your garage. That’s where you make the first peek under the cover since you parked your friend for its winter nap last fall, and you discover that no mice or other varmints have munched on that reproduction interior you put in the year before last. A further look under the hood shows no other evidence of critters or critter-caused damage.

You don’t curse the cold rains that soon follow. They’re washing the salt, sand and grit off the driveway, your street, and every other road that you can’t wait to drive your Corvette on again.

And then…that day that dawns bright and warm(er), where the only thing you have to do is take the cover off the Vette, re-install the battery that’s been sitting fully charged on your wood shelf all winter (or unplug the trickle charger that's kept it full of juice), then you use the floor jack to take it off the jackstands and bring it back to earth. Finally, the key is in the ignition, the ignition switch moves to START, and the resulting sound of the starter motor and awakening engine mean that your fiberglass-clad friend is just about ready to take up where you left off last fall.