Living on the Edge

Here's one of the reasons all the other houses out here on the edge of the Atlantic are shut up for the winter.  

The little road that leads from our house out to the main road was a solid sheet of ice the other morning.  I'm talking like three inches of slippery ice, coating the road from top to bottom.  It was like someone took a Zamboni to it.  

One of the reasons we are generally not bothered by stuff like this is that we don't get around with a car.  When we need to get somewhere, we walk or ride bikes; when we need groceries, we have them delivered.

But on this morning, neither of those worked.  At about 8:30 our delivery driver called to say he was stuck at the top of our road, waiting for a tow truck to winch him back out to the main road.  (That road was completely clear; ours was an ice rink. Typical.)  The driver said that if we wanted our groceries we could walk up there and get them, because no car was going to survive a trip down our road that day.  So we threw on some boots and headed out, but with our first step onto the road both of us were flat on our faces.

I felt like a 95-year-old, shuffling along by the centimeter trying to keep my body upright.  We laughed and laughed our way up the hill, stepping a few inches and then sliding back down a few more.  We tried to get some traction by walking along the edge of the road, where there was knee-deep icy snow, but usually we couldn't walk there because it was actually snow-covered bushes.

When we finally made it to the stranded grocery delivery truck and gathered our stash, there was way too much to carry, even after we'd crammed Marc's Alps backpack full of goods.  But that's where the ice came in handy: we just laid our gallons of milk and boxes of cereal on the ice, and off they slid down the hill to home!

Then Marc had to go to work.  There was no getting the bike up that hill, so he ventured back up on foot again, this time with his bike on his shoulder.  Never been more impressed.

I followed him, with the camera, because someone had to be there to document his potentially epic slip and fall if it should happen.  And maybe call an ambulance.  Sadly/happily, it didn't happen.  Here he's approaching the top of the road, where the delivery truck was still waiting for his rescue winch.  When Marc got to the main road, it was all cleared and salted and off he cruised to work.

I was left to wonder about the chicken-and-egg situation out on the edge of the water.  Does no one live out here in the winter because the road (and everything else) turns to a sheet of ice?  Or does the town opt not to plow and salt our road because they think no one is crazy enough to live out here in the middle of winter?