Bitter Cold

Oh, weather dot com, you cad!

You know it's going to be a good day when your forecast reads thus: "Bitterly cold. Plentiful sunshine. High around 0F."

Over the weekend, Anthony and I had a very successful work day in Saramay's heated garage. We both installed battery blankets. He installed a radiator hose heater, and I installed a silicone hot pad on the bottom of my oil pan. All these things plug in overnight so that your car will start in the morning.

My car wouldn't start this morning. Of course, it was like -19F, according to Google. It's warmed up to about -8F right now, so on lunch, I'll probably go home and try to start it again.

I thought I'd be all set when I bought a nice recirculating tank-style coolant heater for the Canyonero. The problem is that there's no way to get access to the right hoses to install the damn thing. Silly man, just get a freeze plug block heater, you say? Well, there's no access to my freeze plugs. I can just barely see the side of the block around the engine mounts, alternator, exhaust manifolds and all the four-wheel drive crap. It's just too crowded to get at the side of the block.

So, that leaves the radiator hose-style heater. It'd probably work great, but I didn't want to do it if I didn't have to. Anthony bought the one that they had at NAPA, so I'll try to order one soon.

Oh, I also had a little magnetic stick-on block heater thing, but the cord cracked in the "bitter" cold and now the wires are exposed.

Samara was definitely not happy this morning when we both had to walk to work in the negative temperatures. That long underwear sure is coming in handy now.

I guess if I'm looking for a silver lining, it's that we haven't had the temperatures they've had in Anchorage. -35F? No thanks. That's 67 degrees below freezing, you know.

Update:

I went home on lunch, and according to various sources, the temperature is now between 0F and 12F. (I don't know where the 12F came from--it sure doesn't feel like 12F.) Anyway, the car started fine. I'm ordering a radiator hose heater as I type this.