5 Places You’ll Probably Bust Your Butt on Ice This Winter
With last weekend's snow squalls and another storm on tap for this weekend, it's time to face the inevitable: winter has come, and it's likely to stay for at least the next four to six months. Even though Wyoming has entered the unofficially dubbed "penguin waddle" season, in which most people waddle down sidewalks in an effort to avoid slipping on the ice, nobody is completely safe from completely busting it while out shopping or dining with friends. Here are a list of places to be on alert this winter season.
- 1
Downtown Laramie
The beauty of Downtown Laramie is that all of the shopping and eating is within walking distance of your parking spot. The downside is that most of it is also often covered in ice. My best advice is to do your best penguin impression while wandering downtown, and to wear flat-heeled shoes.
- 2
Grocery Store Parking Lot
Whether it's Safeway, Ridley's, or Walmart, chances are that you're going to slip in the parking lot at least once this winter, and probably while you've got both hands full of groceries. The only way to survive this is to sacrifice yourself to save the eggs you bought or to keep your gallon of milk from bursting on the pavement.
- 3
Your Driveway/Sidewalk
Despite your best efforts, you're probably not going to be able to scrape every last flake of snow from your driveway and sidewalk. Even if you do manage to clean up all the snow, the ice remains. There is a small silver lining, though, in that the only people that will see your face plant are probably your family members or roommates, allowing you to salvage a scrap of dignity.
- 4
Coe Library
It might make me a terrible person, but I spent many an afternoon in college watching through the window at the Book and Bean inside Coe Library and delighting in the schadenfreude of other students slipping on the sidewalk while rushing to class. It's understandable though, that in the rush of class, in addition to worrying about all the homework to do, that one could overlook the ever present patches of ice that exist between Coe Library and the Student Union.
- 5
Your Workplace
The dignity I said you might save by slipping in your driveway? That all goes out the window when you face plant it in front of your place of work. Whereas there might not be many people to see you fall at home, busting it in front of the workplace likely means that all of your coworkers will see it happen. The best recovery for this is to laugh at yourself, and maybe your coworkers will feel a little bit less awful for laughing at you.