December 9, 2007 (event)

When hell freezes over
I work at a call center. When I left work at 10pm, it was a frigid cold night, probably a few degrees below zero. Two of my coworkers left the building with me, ironically parked one to the left of my car, and one to the right. All three of got to our cars at about the same time, and all three of us attempted to open our car doors... but they were frozen shut.

The guy on the right was a smoker who pulled out his lighter and thawed it open.

I thought I'd give it a few more tugs... Yet, then I realized my door was actually still locked.

So then the guy on the left gives up on the driver side, "logically" walks around and gets the passenger door open to his brand new car.

So I decide to copycat.

Sure enough the passenger door was easier to open, and I spider man my way through my car. Getting my legs under the steering wheel that usually touches my knees while I drive was hard enough. Luckily my engine was not frozen over, and my car starts okay. I unlock the door from the inside, but my door still would not open. I almost broke my door off when I got it open.

Great, right, end of story... right? My door is open and everything is peachy. Well for about 30 seconds... I close my door and pull out of the parking stall, and begin to drive out of the parking lot. As I turn right, my door flies open and I get hit with a gust of freezing cold air as my door flaps back and forth. I drive a stick shift, if you read one of the previous hard links... you already know that. Well, I also don't have power steering. I'm in the middle of this turn, that requires four hands, you know, two for the steering wheel, one to shift up, and one to pull my door shut. It just didn't work.

I stopped on the side of the road and tried to close my door, but every time I thought I had it closed, and kept driving on, it still was not staying shut. It turns out that hell doesn't free over, it freezes open. I drove home the entire way with my left hand bracing my door, and my right hand shifting while my knees did the steering. The latch on the door that kept it closed, was frozen open.