Clearing the Snow in Denver: For Mayor Hickenlooper: I don't know if your advisors have been sheltering you from the truth, or if you have just developed an odd form of snow blindness, but here is reality:

The news says you claim that "only half of the 14,000 blocks in Denver have been cleared of snow," but I have my doubts that ANY streets have been completely cleared. Even major arteries like Colorado Boulevard have lanes in places that are impassible because of ice. If Colorado Boulevard is someone else's responsibility (as a highway), then please tell me a single street that is really completely cleared. Even downtown has blocks of ice that force cars to park somewhere else. Look at Broadway from 18th to Colfax.

Okay, maybe you mean streets that are somewhat cleared. Even around the schools where it was claimed that the streets were cleared after the 2nd week, the streets are cleared to pavement at no more than one lane. The feeder streets around my house (the streets with paint and traffic lights) are Yale and Dahlia. Both those streets have huge piles of old iced snow along both sides. When we get a little warmth, the streets become flooded and then ice over. When we start getting real melting, every single sewer grate will be covered with ice and the flooding will be worse. There is not one single bus stop that has been cleared along those streets to the curb, so even if homeowners could get to the sidewalks, there is no sense in clearing them.

The smallest side streets are just ice-packed, so we can get through them fairly well. The worst streets are secondary streets like Dartmouth, they are streets necessary to get to the small side-streets and so have had tremendous numbers of vehicles driving on them. That is where the ruts come in; my car is rather low, I scrape bottom anywhere along Dartmouth. You should have had those secondary streets cleared long, long ago. You say that Monday you will start putting out contracts to help clear the city blocks. Thank you, we will see how it goes.

If your Starter is Going Out--you know, sometimes it turns over and sometimes it just clicks a little--you might be able to last a year or more while it goes. It works better in warm weather, and better when the engine is warm. I found only one reference on the internet to a possibility of messing up your engine, it didn't sound too likely.

What finally happened was this: one day we started the car and the starter just kept going. You couldn't turn off the engine or the starter. I thought I might disconnect the battery, would that work or not? Before I got to that point, smoke started pouring out of the starter and finally stopped. The engine was apparently not damaged, but I had to replace the battery; it burned up as well as the starter. It was only a couple years old, but I guess I can mark it up to a learning experience. A bus driver told me later that he once had a job keeping generators charged. When one of the starters went out (stuck on), there were explosions, fire, and huge destruction. By the way, my 1994 Camry was made in the U.S.A., and it shows.