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I'll be honest, I had been kind of looking forward to the Canadian winter. Everyone was going on about how unbelievably hard it was, there was definitely a lot of winding up going on, and also let's be honest a bit of Canadian machismo. Which is fine, but I thought, how bad can it really be? It gets cold, you wrap up. It gets colder, you wrap up a bit more. It snows, you walk through the snow. Well so far I have to say the cold hasn't been the problem (though they say the big cold doesn't kick in until January), but the snow and ice was not something I'd really mentally prepared myself for. Oh sure it *looks* gorgeous, straight off a Christmas card, but before you get all jealous it has presented all these new daily problems I never really knew existed. We've had only two proper snowfalls so far, and already the snow around the house is up to my knees. The thing is, in Europe, it snows, lovely, we all go and play in it, next day, it's gone. Here, it stays for six months. So what do you do with it? I shovel a path to the front door, already the walls of this path are up to my thighs, where am I going to keep putting this shit?? The worst of it is though that we don't have a garage for the car, it's sitting in a very short driveway in front of our house. Getting the snow off the car (and finding somewhere to put the snow) and getting the car started is bad enough, it's getting the car out of the driveway and onto the road that's the biggest problem, because I have to dig a path for it, but every time the snowplough comes down the road it creates another hill of dirty icey snow along the edge of the road, blocking my car in. I've had to invest in an icepick to try to make a dent in it, and even as it is I've scraped the bottom of the car so badly on the ice I feel as if I'm driving the Titanic. What's it going to be like come April?? I'm told that eventually a lorry will come round in the night and take away the piles of ploughed snow that are everywhere, apparently they have a huge landfill site for dumped snow outside the city, they dump so much of it that it doesn't melt even into the heat of August. I'm also guilty of leaving it too late. "It's snow!" I thought, "what's the problem? It's like shovelling talc!" Except it's not just snow - one night we had freezing rain. It was quite nice, actually - like walking through a couple of inches of tiny glacier mints. Problem is, overnight it went from millions of tiny glacier mints to one big fuck off glacier - they all fused and went absolutely solid. Meaning that the bottom layer of the snow is rock solid and the highest performance lubricant known to man, so in fact it pays to keep a bit of snow left for traction before you hit ice and go arse over tit. And stupidly, I'd left my bike out waiting for it to melt so I could cycle in to the office again (DUH! ENGLISH FOOL) and it's only gone and set in ice up to about 2cm beyond the wheel rims, as if it was set in concrete! Yesterday I had to excavate it with an icepick and put it in the shed, where its coating of snow & ice will probably stay there until May.  Anyway, it's all a new experience for someone who's spent most of his time in the south of England & Belgium, where a flurry of dandruff is enough to stop all public transport for the day. Well, bit of local colour for you there. I look forward to vermin finding it deeply uninteresting. .gif) PS - I'd have taken pics except I've been too ill/lazy, will get around to it though. |
Letter from Canada 2 • Page 2
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LOL, Boom, I'm really beginning to understand exactly where you're coming from! 
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Salaman wrote:
Nah. I'm paying some bloke in a mini-bulldozer to come and plough it for me. Bollocks to doing this for four years.
You might want to invest in a second hand snow blower otto, it'll save you some of the hassle..gif)
Small tip. While you're up there, you're bound to find some friends/neighbours/colleagues who have an outdoor hottub.
Wait. You're suggesting I run around in the snow, when it's minus 20 or less, wearing nothing but my swimming trunks? o_O
Don't miss out on the experience.
It's great to sit in a hot tob, surrounded by snow.
When you get too hot, you can hop out, run a lap through knee deep snow and hop back in. -
Aww jaa you git! That's a lovely photo too. Did you take it? -
sam_spade wrote:
I think his name is Denis.
Mr Plow or Plow King? -
I'm leaving for England tomorrow so I probably won't have a chance, not by daylight anyway, but I did snap a few shots of icicles from the window while I was off with flu. I'll bung them up when I get a chance. Anyway, plenty of time over the next four winters to build up my snow portfolio. -
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*bump*
So anyway, we got back here on Saturday. While Retroid was scuba-diving in Carlisle, we were out looking at the snow.
The pile of ploughed snow on the edge of the road is getting [link=http://homepage.mac.com/chris.kendall/.Pictures/Photo%20Album%20Pictures/2005-01-09%2013.18.25%20-0800/Image-6FB83884628211D9.jpg">stupidly high. It must over two metres tall now, here's a one metre tall person as a point of reference. So anyway, we get to the end of our street and, lo, there are all these people -
Dunno, don't think so. But they weren't insured! I can't believe some people. -
Yeah I think so. And we're not even halfway into the winter yet. Last week apparently it got down to -37 (with windchill) but at the moment it's not too bad at all, just below freezing and very dry so it actually doesn't feel as cold as London did. And later this week they're forecasting 13 degrees which is bizarre, so we'll have a day or two when everything starts to melt before it goes back down again at the weekend. -
Bizarro weather in this country. In one week we've had a bigger temperature fluctuation than you'd get in the UK over the whole year! It was plus 13 last Thursday, and tomorrow morning it's going down to minus 30 - that's 43 degrees variation in one week! So according to the forecast, my walk into the office tomorrow morning's going to "feel like" minus 42 with the wind chill factor. Nice. Time to crack out the woolly long johns methinks. -
Nuttah wrote:
(a) I rarely drive, as I walk to the office; (b) they plough immediately so most of the snow is gone from the roads straight away; (c) they stick tons of salt down so the snow & ice melts even at temperatures of -30; (d) everyone has snow tyres, so even on the few sideroads that don't get ploughed it's not too bad. I really haven't found it a problem at all. Canadian drivers are dozy sods on the whole, sitting in their absurd automatic fuck-off 4x4 pick-ups, and I wouldn't trust them behind the wheel of a Stanna chairlift, but they're reasonably well-behaved and everyone drives around tamely without careening into each other.
I'm curious, as you know when it snows in england it falls over a period of a few hours or even overnight. All the roads suddenly become kiddy hour when drivers decide that they either cant drive faster than 2 metres per minute, or pile into some junction because they have left a ridiculous breaking space.
Presumably you brought you lovely car *cough* over from europe, so... how are you finding driving in the snow? -
Boom wrote:
Hahaha great!
Here's my view of Canadian winters
Minus 43 on the way into the office this morning. Jesus H Mary and Joseph it was cold! I was actually fine under all my kit (wool thermal long johns & long-sleeved vest, woollen bomber jacket, fleece lined windproof trousers, thermal hiking socks, goretex boots, goosedown 20 tog puffer jacket, balaclava, neck gaiter, woolly beanie, ski mitts) but ice kept forming on the end of my nose whenever I breathed out, it really hurt. This is such fun.
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