Stop right there, Bobby.

If the street outside my home is any indication, ice is the hands-down winner of Frost's doomsday derby.

I made that determination Thursday when an arctic clipper was doing about 150 down Arthur Street, freezing and glazing the small lake that had formed 15 feet from my door. Yes, it's hyperbole, but work with me here, because my half of the street from the corner to the alley has been solid ice since before the Feast of St. Stephen.

That's a good two months of navigating floes, bergs and mini-glaciers, which continually move and shift. So a warm Wednesday washes water over the curb and onto my sidewalk to be frozen solid Thursday.

To get to our garage, we walk on the crusty snow rather than on our sidewalks. It's safer.

It's the end of the world.

Well not really.

It's really gravity and spotty snow removal and my reluctance to chop ice one more time, two previous marathons hacking away at the cold stuff during a thaw both resulting in near-death experiences.

Once, moments before night and exhaustion felled me, hallucinations took over. I swear the Titanic was floating perilously past, toward my ice-jammed driveway, Leonardo DiCaprio up front, Kate Winslet blowing me a kiss. You're right: My heart did go on and on but only because of the four hours I had spent on the business end of an ice chopper.

Grooving drivers

Seems water runs downhill, which, apparently, is where I live: down the hill both directions.

Such contours have provided a perfect (ice) storm: a couple inches of snow in the street every week, basic principles of hydrology, only a few hours of sunlight a day on the frozen area and a maddening series of warm ups and cold downs.

The result: I have more ice than an open-air fish market in Phoenix. Nor am I alone. I've counted dozens of homes with the frozen stretches nestled perilously against their sidewalks and driveways.

Have I mentioned the ruts? I have a couple beauties, about 20 feet long, chasms in the middle of the street at right angles to my driveway. A driver with dentures could not back out of my garage without incident.

One rut is deeper than a Susan Sontag essay, the kind of abyss that should require a zoning change or at least a Sherpa to guide unsuspecting drivers through its icy groove.

About a month ago, after hours of chopping, pounding, sweating and swearing, my son and I were able to open a small channel, only to have it freeze in the street in front of our driveway. Three snowfalls later, a large lump has appeared, a hideous, shivery growth apparently attached to the street below.

Where are Paul, Babe and a front-end loader when I need them?

More ice

Better, yet, where are 10 straight days of 45 or a week of 60s or one record-breaking sunny 85?

The ice has haunted my world away from home, too. Trying to squeeze into a parking spot at a basketball game, I mistook a solid block of ice for a pile of snow. Silly me. It was white. It was piled. It was January.

Surprise. Now I have a running board bent like a Cirque du Soleil extra. Like to see fire do that.

Fire, or I should say heat, did get into the act. It combined with my nemesis three months ago, at the start of my winter of discontent.

During a delightful afternoon of freezing rain, I watched as a microscopic pit in my windshield became a sliver and slowly crawled across the width of the glass. You know the science: Heat from the defrost and ice from the sky equal a cracked windshield.

With all the ice around, footing is trickier than a magicians' convention. My wife and I have only fallen once each, but hey, the slick season is still in full bloom.

The forecast for Saturday is 41. I have an uneasy feeling that I'll be chopping and cussing and well you know the rest.

Scarier, too, is the possibility that, once I've broken through 6 inches of solid ice and stared into that deep, dark hole, I'll find more ice.

And the end of the world.