At least four of my coworkers fell on their way to work. Facebook friends announced that they had landed on their butts after tumbling off bikes. Perfectly agile acquaintances looked like apprehensive toddlers on the slick streets. Last week’s thaw-freeze was bad enough, but the thick new coating of snow took things to the next level — or rather, the next level of hell, if hell had frozen over.

The sidewalk in front of where I live is shown above, in a photo taken Monday night. This skating rink appeared while I was gone for Christmas, and the time I spent with an ice chopper on Sunday proved fruitless. Fortunately, I had a bucketful of sand that I’d swept up from the alley a spring or two ago, so I spread that out, and after it was gone, I picked up more sand at one of the city of Minneapolis’ free sidewalk sand distribution points.

I’m ready to do another coat tonight if need be — the neighbor who shovels the snow may have also shoveled off the sand.

If you have an ice remedy, or a tale of a tumble you took, please share in the comments below.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 30th, 2008 at 6:55 pm and is filed under Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.