Dear Niece, Last night I had bad dreams about the apocalypse without zombies, because I’ve been reading too much Huffington Post. Huffington Post writes about only three things on their main page: Apocalyptic Politics, Apocalyptic Weather, and Kittens. On the Black Voices page they write about Beyonce, Bill Cosby, and Apocalyptic Cops. Around 2:30 AM, I decided if things get too bad you should come up here to “The Wall.” Since it is remote up here in the Northwoods, we will be safer. In a city, we would have more access to better supplies, of course, but the supplies would run out eventually, and weRead More →

The other day, I didn’t realize I left my coat in the office until I was half way to my car. I weighed walking back upstairs against completing the trek to the car in the light snow and 15 degrees cold. I felt fine, so I decided to shrug off the weather. Once in the car, I Facebook Bragged about officially adapting to the Northwoods weather. The car never warmed up before I made it home. I regretted the decision from the moment the Fiat Popsicle made it out of the parking lot. In the morning, I realized “I ain’t got no coat” to wearRead More →

Wind chills to 45 below zero. In other news, the deer are turning on their oppressors. Having befriended the deer, we are guiltless. We are on the right side of history. Deer fights back at hunter who shot her (in Wisconsin). And this is even better: Another day at the Wall, with all its fierce winter beauty. So far, we’re still on good terms.

Fiat Pop 400c’s sold in colder areas have cold-weather packages. My popalicious car is from the south, and has no such thing, so it’s being slowly winterized. Two challenges for cold weather: Pop engines won’t start at -20 F, and perhaps I won’t either. The certainty of a sneauxpocalypse in the Northwoods this year has had me gravely worried. People talked about driving to school last year in -35 F. Yeah. Remote starters are luxury up here, but engine block heaters are a Pop necessity. We went to the Fiat dealer in Appleton (great folks there) to get the heater and starter installed. The mechanicsRead More →

view from the pop dash

When it comes to cars and other things involving agility, dexterity, or getting stuck on the roadside, I have low uncertainty tolerance. As a weak adventurer, I’ve been nervous about my adventuring companion, the Fiat Pop 500c, and how it will handle the snow. After as much research as possible about the car’s capabilities, I realized that my quest for certainty and comfort comes only in the doing and not the reading. Here on The Wall, aka Rhinelander, winter is fierce, and now it’s time for the first doing. We got more snow yesterday than Rhinelander gets on average every November. Fortunately, as of lastRead More →