Dallas Ice: A Business Travel Adventure

Ice in Dallas is a slippery slope. Lots of them.

Look, I like Dallas. Growing city, prosperous, diverse, great food. So please, Dallas residents, do not aim your Texas-sized weapons in my general direction.

But business travel in Dallas during or immediately following an ice storm is a nightmare, because Dallas steadfastly refuses to use salt on its icy roads.

Oh sure, you could be logical and say Dallas doesn’t use salt because it isn’t cost effective to maintain salt trucks for use once or twice in a normal winter.

But I know the truth: Dallas hoards all of its salt for use exclusively on the rims of its Margarita glasses.

Even McDonald’s hides salt packets during ice storms.

Sand, however, is another story! Dallas road workers do place some sand on the roads following an ice storm. Randomly, it seems.

Based on the distribution patterns of the sand, which bear no linkage to the actually icy areas of the road, it is possible the sand is simply residue from passing tumbleweeds.

So there we were, my business colleague and I, in Dallas with random sand scattered around, and still we had to conduct our Business, which included traveling to a delicious restaurant via the Dallas freeway system.

We ventured out in our heavily insured rental vehicle. I assured my colleague we would be fine, because I had experience with winter driving. I am a Michigan native, after all, and have driven in winter conditions many times, including as recently as just 14 years ago.

She looked at me with all the confidence of someone about to have their spleen removed by a cable repairman.

But that driving experience? It helped me master winter driving techniques including:

1. Sliding through stop signs like Wyle E. Coyote trying to avoid skidding over a cliff after another Roadrunner trick.
2. Driving with my entire windshield covered in ice, except for a 3-inch diameter porthole I chipped away with a standard issue credit card.
3. Fishtailing in my English teacher’s snow-covered front yard.

So onto the freeways we went, reaching top speeds of 20 MPH. I believe this is actually the fastest I’ve ever driven on a Dallas freeway. This is because, in my experience, Dallas freeways are in rush hour conditions 23 hours per day. There weren’t many vehicles on the road at this time, however: a few cars, some semi trucks bravely soldiering forth, and several dog sled teams training for the Iditarod.

Even in the best of conditions, Dallas roads are confusing. The highways seem to utilize the principles of movement employed by worm holes in space. You’re cruising along (at 20 MPH), safe in the knowledge that you are on Highway X. Suddenly, without warning, your lane turns into Highway Y and you’re headed somewhere else. Local ordinances prevent you from making a U-turn in these instances until you cross the border into Oklahoma.

You might think that I should have avoided driving altogether, and utilized a cab or rideshare service. I agree. I wanted to take Uber, but opened the app and learned that only Zambonis were available.

Fortunately, we reached all of our destinations without any vehicle or bodily damage, experienced only moderate instances of atrial fibrillation, and had enough sand caked onto the vehicle to replenish all the beaches of the Gulf Coast. Finally, we returned to the airport where the TSA held us up only briefly to discuss why we had so much sand in our pants.

We survived it all. Dallas, I like your city and will be back soon — where “soon” means “ a time of year where the temperature cannot, through the normal laws of nature, fall below 60 degrees”.

And when I do return, I know there will be plenty of salt for the rim of my margarita glass.