Imagine if you yourself didn't take a shower between November and May.

People go without washing their cars during midwestern winters because it feels futile: as soon as the car gets wet, it freezes. Cars become ice-crusted, salt-stained, and dingy. Often, owners get disheartened and the inside of the car fills up with McDonalds wrappers, stray pennies, pieces of glove lint, empty coffee cups, slush, dirt, and gas-station receipts: it's the broken-window theory of vehicular hygiene. Drivers enter their cars quickly: tensed, cursing, bracing themselves as they wait for the heat to kick in.

If the weather ever does climb above 32 degrees, lines of 70 or more cars gather and slouch towards the car-wash before temperatures drop again and washing is no longer feasible. Midwestern Multi-Chambered Car-Warming Tunnels -- shaped like a four-bellied snake -- are car washes for cold weather.

In the first chamber, the cars sits in a small room with intense temperatures that melt the ice off of the vehicle.

Once melted, the car enters the second chamber where it is washed, sudsed and scrubbed clean in the manner of a standard all-season car wash.

Then, the car enters the drying chamber. In a hot room, the car is elevated on a platform that is surrounded -- top, left, right and bottom -- by car-sized blow-dryers. These dryers are mounted on a belt that rotates clockwise around the car. At the same time, the platform the car is on rotates counterclockwise. After one rotation, which takes between 3 and 5 minutes, the forced hot-air jets have reached and dried every surface of the car. All the moisure is evaporated and no ice will form on the car when it leaves.

The last chamber is optional: car colonoscopy and driver muscle relaxant. This is a pleasantly decorated, well-heated room in which the owner can disembark from the car while it is vacuumed and exhumed of trash. Gentle music plays. The owner can read a magazine, make a phone call, or if desired, purchase a 5-10 minute shoulder massage, available for a small additional fee. Old toxins are released from interior bodies.

In this way, people have shiny, clean cars through the duration of the winter. They flow the energy. Their spirits are higher, their drive shines.