"I'll give you a winter prediction: It's gonna be cold, grey, and it's gonna last you for the rest of your life."- Bill Murray, Groundhog Day

Above is the Denali Highway. Well, actually, above is the Denali Highway as it looks from above. Soon, the Denali Highway will be closed, not because of environmentalists, but because the environment - they don't maintain this highway in winter. You can drive on it, but, good luck. The 20' of ice and snow might be a slight deterrent. You can click on it for larger goodness.

There are a few interesting terms in Alaska - one of them is the name of the first snowfall - Termination Dust, some call it.

Why Termination Dust? Perhaps it's because it was on the first snowfall in 1971 that a robot from the future, looking just like a California Governor (Jerry Brown) came to Alaska to search for Adam Sandler so he could kill him to keep the remake of "The Longest Yard" from being made.

Nah. Termination Dust is just when construction folks get fired, since you aren't going to pour much concrete when it's -40F. It gets hard, but that's from the freezing. Another reason why car dates don't lead to too many teenage pregnancies in mid-January, you know, the hard parts freezing.

What else happens in Alaska when winter hits?

We don't use salt on the roads to kill the ice. Why, might you ask? We can't. Salt on a road really depresses the melting point of Ice. It makes Ice sit around the house watching Oprah and eating frosting straight from the plastic tub wishing it could get a date. Very depressing for Ice, but, salt only gets you so far. And, Fairbanks Ice needs a lot more depressing than that to turn from Ice to water. It gets cold here.

So, in the war for some sort of road traction, we spread gravel about willy-nilly like the Kennedy family spreads indictments money around on Spring Break. Gravel is nice - it is pointy, whereas the ice is smooth. Pointy parts hold on to tires - smooth parts don't. All of this thought and care is nice when your car begins to spin toward a batch of trees that had the gall to grow right where the tyranny of inertia combined with the lack of friction would like your car to go. Short answer - gravel combined with snow and ice forms our road surface for six months of the year.

While we're on cars, winterizing your car means something here beyond your mechanic wanting to make an extra buck. All of the cars up here have (at minimum) car engine block heaters. This prevents your oil from being as thick as a Tom Clancy book.

Some cars have pads that heat the batteries. Some have heaters for transmissions. Many have auto-starts, which allow you to sit around driking coffee while your car gets toasty warm. The result of all of these electrical devices is every car has a dangly extension cord hanging off the front - summer or winter. Most public places have plug-ins for the dangly bits from your car. If you have dangly bits, you know how important it is for you have a place to insert them.

Many cars are left running when folks go shopping. Not good for gas mileage, but good for when it's -55F and you don't want to freeze your hiney off. And I like my hiney.

Also, it has to be the zenith of suck when you can't get your car started.

And you're attempting to start it.

At -60F.

Ugh. That's got to be as frustrating as attempting to teach Eminem to read.

Enough (for now) on cars. Most new parents swaddle their newborns in enough blankets to choke a horse when it's 50F above. Here, my five year old wanders around outside in a t-shirt and jeans (for an extended bit) at 20F without complaint. We do start to swaddle the infant, but only at about 30F. Gotta toughen The New Boy up sometime. It's gonna get 80 degrees colder than 30F.

I'll give some more change-of-season information next time. For now, I've got to go and frolic in the relatively balmy 20F before it gets a bit nippy out.