The recent ice storm has made getting in and out of my Appalachian childhood home frighteningly similar to the "luge" event at the winter Olympics. Since the storm swept through on the 23rd, the twisting sheet of ice formerly known as a road has been passable only to four-wheel drive vehicles and/or the severely determined. I belonged to the latter group when I managed to barrel through in a borrowed Nissan Sentra to join my family on Christmas Day, and since then, we've only been able to get down from the mountain in my mother's truck. The trip featured a few moments of uncontrolled skidding to remind us of the fragility of life and the importance of valuing those around you before it's too late and you've already slid off the side of the road together.

Susan's mom, neuroscientist and slug-experimentrice Jane, and Jane's manfriend, wine-fanatic geologist Blair, were being pretty good sports about the whole thing. They were staying at a nearby inn and hoping to make it up the mountain so everyone could have a Christmas dinner together, but the shitty road conditions forced us into repeated reshuffling of plans. We knew we could ferry them up the road to the house during the day, but when the temperature sank in the late afternoon we would no longer be able to get them back down to their car and hotel room. Weighing a forced overnight among this new crowd of strangers against the plush digs of the Boar's Head Inn, they wisely chose the latter. Susan and I met them in town to visit some of Charlottesville's antique stores.

If you really want to know someone well, I suggest going with them to an antique store. The only better option is that you put them on the back of a motorcycle that you're driving. When I lived in Senegal, I had the perfect mate-evaluation device, the Suzuki 125cc desert dirt bike. Driving the motorcycle through the desert sand was challenging enough when alone, but an extra person added a degree of randomness into the equation that's not unlike a relationship. Putting someone on the back was tantamount to placing your life in their hands: every move they made back there had a powerful positive or negative effect on the steering and balance of the motorcycle.

Some people would wrap their arms around me and practically bond with my back, sharing a center of gravity in a wonderfully intimate sensation that was made more powerful by our common terror at the potentially fatal ride. Other outings were not so pleasurable. When I went out into the desert with my then-girlfriend Naffi, it was like hauling a giant trailer with a full-size swimming pool in it, sloshing water in all directions and perpetually threatening to jackknife me into a tree. It didn't help to point out that when she leaned, or swung her arms wildly, or performed chorus line dance numbers back there, it affected our forward momentum and verticality. She hadn't managed to negotiate a successful education as a female in Senegal by being a team player, and she wasn't particularly inclined to start now just because I was whining about her roughing up the ride.

I adored her fierce independence, but not her casual willingness to help me into a violent motorcycle wreck. The relationship continued for a while, in Senegal and briefly in France, but we never really made it out of that desert.

I was considering the power of these small tests as we all strolled around a large antique store in downtown Charlottesville. I love humble and bargain-friendly antique stores -- a vanishing breed, but still locatable in rural Virginia. I tend to approach the experience as one would hunt for any kind of quarry: everyone fans out into the wilderness of the store and tries to flush out something cool and cheap. It's ultimately an individual experience, a struggle of human vs the unknown, with the social component coming when everyone assembles after the hunt to compare experiences and bear the kills triumphantly home. Bargains are like art: you can be better or worse educated about the context, but generally it boils down to knowing it when you see it. That experience is difficult, or impossible, to share. Similarly, I have a hard time going to an art exhibit with a friend who wants us to stick together, dutifully shuffling in unison from one artwork to another. It creates an enforced congruency of perceptions that feels stifling.

Jane and Blair, bless their hearts, are social antique shoppers. They seemed to want us to stroll around together and compare impressions about what we found. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that approach, of course, but the crucial difference in shopping styles made me feel I wasn't being very friendly and attentive. They were, after all, on my home turf, finding things to do because they couldn't get their car up my mountain road. In thanks, I was gracelessly giving them the slip, stealing off to examine the 1960s waffle makers on my own. I tried to keep the others within about an aisle of me, providing an acceptable sense of togetherness without impacting on the success of the hunt. But so much energy was being expended in maintaining the compromise distance that I was distracted and found nothing of interest. I'm aware that this may tell the casual observer more about my screwy psychoscape than that of my companions. This time, it may be me wavering on the back of the motorcycle.

The next day, the temperature finally hovered above freezing, providing us with the window of opportunity to ferry Jane and Blair up the hill, gobble down the long-delayed dinner together, converse for a requisite post-prandial interlude, and return them to their vehicle for the trek back to Washington. Susan and I compared notes and agreed that the families had enjoyed each other's company. I think we were each imagining the worst things our relatives could say to each other, and were stunned when no one detonated even a small social grenade. Possibly a good sign, although possibly an indication that they're holding out for the big guns.