RE: SUVs in Chicago's Snow

["Spire, Ed" <ed.spire@missioncritical.com>]

Before I moved to Houston, I drove der Uberwgn (95.5 S6 Avant) in several
deep snows in Chicago.  With a good set of snow tires I was pretty much able
to go through anything reasonable with absolutely no problem.  The only
downside was that frozen ice would build up on the inside of the rims, and
then on the freeway it feels like your wheels are very unbalanced, until
that crap melts off.

BTW, I flew into Chicago O'Hare Sunday at 3 PM, ran some errands in my Mom's
crappy little Escort, and flew out again at 9 PM.  22" of snow and the city
was working quite well, thank you.  They had a mayor tossed out of office a
few years back because the streets didn't get plowed, and the current mayor
(a chap named "Daley", can you imagine) is too politically astute to let
that happen.  Lotsa overtime for the snowplow drivers, I'm sure, but they
really have the equipment and experience to know how to deal with such
things in that town.  It was no where near the disaster it was painted to be
in the national news.

BTW**2, The Wall Street Journal is an excellent paper for anyone mature
enough to care about what's going on in the country/world, not just the
financial viewpoint.  No local coverage, but excellent national and
international coverage.  It is expensive, though.

------------------------------ original message --------------------

Date: Wed, 6 Jan 1999 13:12:20 -0500
From: Lawrence Bardfeld <LB6116@PITCAIRN.com>
Subject: SUVs in Chicago's Snow

For those of you who may somehow have missed the front page of today's 
Wall Street Journal -- normally, a "must read" for every Audi fan, 
right? :) -- there's an entertaining article in the Journal (no, 
that's not an oxymoron) about all the SUV drivers who discovered 
(surprise!) that they couldn't handle the 20 inches of snow that 
descended upon Chicago.  Although the article refers to the fact that 
"streets were littered as transmissions failed, axles broke, and 
batteries died" the main culprits seem to be, of course, the drivers 
who had no more knowledge of how to deal with the conditions than what 
they derived from Jeep Cherokee commercials.  Unfortunately, I don't 
subscribe to the Internet edition of the Journal, so I can't readily 
make the article available.