Friday, January 13, 2006

Styrofoam Ice Capades

One of my (Ami) favorite movies is "While You Were Sleeping" which is truly Bill Pullman and Sandra Bullock at their best. The comedy relief of the flick is the drop-out, plumber-like son of Lucy's (Bullock) landlord, Joe Fusco Jr. Throughout the movie he pursues Bullock with lame lines like "Luc, Thursday night, you and me I got tickets. Ice Capades. I know a guy."

In any case I had front row seats to a version of Ice Capades on Wednesday night starring non other than my wonderful husband, David.

Our Bible study had wrapped up at about 9.30 that evening and as we stepped out of Sara's apartment building we noticed that it was raining, but the rain was freezing as soon as it hit the ground. Hmm. This should be interesting. We made it to the car without any problem and started home.

As you may have read before, our wonderful little village of Mettweiler, somehow isn't on the map of salt trucks and plows, so it is always an adventure getting home. We made it about half way up our hill and began to slide backwards (in the car). We finally came to a stopping place and Dave decided that he would have to go up to the house and bring down some wonderful German Struegut, which I have mentioned before. He got out of the car, and I thought that he was assessing the situation...only he was assessing for about 10 minutes. Being 7+ months pregnant I sat in the car like I was told to do. Eventually I saw Dave come around the back of the car, though he was walking a little funny, and as he came into the view of the headlights I noticed that he has tied styrofoam to the bottom of his shoes. It was so slippery he couldn't stand up on the street without holding onto the car, so he found a piece of styrofoam, broke off two pieces of it and tied each piece to the bottom of each shoe. He then "skated" up the hill to the house.

He came back down the hill with his shovel and a tarp full of struegut which he threw all over the road. He actually had to make another trip up to the house to get another pile of the gravel and bring it back down before we have enough traction to get up the hill.

Of course, as normal, the Germans were watching us from their windows. It was somewhat amusing to see lights pop on from the houses on the street and then shadows of people at the window staring at us trying to make it up the hill. They must be REALLY bored! At least in America we know not to turn on the light if we are going to watch someone at night.

All was well the next morning and we are hoping not to have freezing rain again.

3 comments:

Lisa said...

Hilarious! I think you need to wave to the Germans and laugh and carry on like the crazy Americans they already think you are. If they think you are crazy, you might as well just go all out and prove them right :) Then follow it up with a nice warm plate of cookies delivered to their door with a German poem about friendship attached. If nothing else, you'll have fun.

Sarah said...

Great story, Ami! I would have been watching from my window too (with the light off). Fun on ice!

Anonymous said...

Not only is that town not on the map for the snowplows but it is not on a map at all, at least the one I had trying to find you.