Green Diamonds, anyone?

[Benjamin Weste Pearre]

After having to get pulled out of a ditch last evening (long story,
though actually it's quite short), I'm thinking studded tires might be
a good idea.  I have a friend with a WRX who impressed me with his
studded Hakka1s (yeah, we were in my car because Audi transmissions
aren't made out of glass), but I'm curious whether anyone has had a
chance to compare any traditional studs against Green Diamond tires
(their address is google.com ;).

Here's the deal: I was going 25 mph down the road from Arapahoe Basin
to Dillon, and the road went from "decent" to "skating rink" just as I
saw a few mangled cars downroad of me (I'm guessing the road had at
least a 4% grade there).  Since my tires (oldish Pirelli P210
Wintersports) had no traction whatsoever, I tried to put the two
right-side wheels in the snowbank along the side of the road in order
to scrub off speed.  Instead, I managed instead to put the two _front_
wheels into the rather deep ditch.  So I got rid of that pesky speed
quite successfully, but didn't get a lot of style points for it, I'm
afraid.  I even had to suffer the bitter humiliation of letting a Jeep
Cherokee pull me out (yeah, I had a shovel, but they wanted to feel
useful).

Lucky I'd broken that tailgater's windshield with a penny only a mile
ago.  Just kidding, already!  ;)

Cheers all!
-Ben

--
Ben Pearre          1990 200TQA          http://hebb.mit.edu/~ben