Its a long, wide and sloped driveway that is shared by myself and my neighbor. Every snow storm if gets plowed, but the little bit of snow left on the asphalt gets packed down by vehicles coming and going and before long it is a solid sheet of ice. I might go out and pour a 50 bag of salt and see if that makes a dent. But at 36 degrees today it is still too cold for me to go out riding. I want it at least above 40, and for more than a few hours so that I don't have to worry about shady spots still being ice covered. I learned a long time ago that ice and two wheel vehicles are not a good combination. When I was an MSF instructor, one of the sites we used had the "range" about a mile from where the bikes were stored. My assistant instructor and I would ride the little bikes out, and then get a ride by truck back to the garage. There was a garage right at the range but we were not allowed legally to use it. But one Saturday, at the end of the class, I made the executive decision to leave the bikes in the prohibited garage just for overnight until the all day Sunday class, to save the hassle of ferrying all the bikes back and forth. Well, an unexpected ice storm hit that night and I had to cancel the class, but we still had to get 18 motorcycles back to the regular garage. Riding slowly, with out feet out as outriggers, we were able to ride all the bikes back over the fully ice coated road without any serious damage to any of the bikes or ourselves. Several falls and tipovers, and even the truck driven by my assistant instructor's truck had trouble on the ice, but after over 4 hours of nervous riding we had all the bikes back where they were supposed to be stored. That was the most I ever did of riding on glare ice. Even those little 125cc and 250cc bikes, weighing no more than about 300 pounds, were a challenge to keep upright on that uneven ice over that long a stretch of road. Never again will I do that willingly. That was one of the joys of being an MSF Instructor in those days.
