A rant with a dash of rave

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So it snowed.  And now it is cold.  As an Albertan, it seems ridiculous to me how this city shuts down when there is a foot of snow on the ground, and the temperature just barely sneaks into the double digits below zero.  I lived in Edmonton for four years without a winter coat or boots.  I can remember one February day when it was a balmy -42 C, without the windchill factor.  Of course, even my superb layering technique was no match for that cold and I just stayed home.  Here I only venture outside fully bundled up.  There are two possible reasons for this paradigm shift: I am older/wiser now, or, after one west coast winter, I have become a wimp.  I think it is a bit of both. 

Yesterday it took me an hour to get six blocks west of where I started on Broadway.  Translink really needs to have a contingency plan for these kind of days.  It might involve running some of the seemingly endless parade of "Not in service" diesel buses in place of the downed trolleys…I might still be waiting for an unsaturated B-Line on Alma if a nice lady in a Jag hadn’t picked up a few of us and dropped us off on campus.  It’s wonderful to know there are people like that driving around in luxury cars!  Today I elected not to bother going to class.  It’s the last week of school, so I figure all I’m really missing is the only cute guy in my entire program giving his long-awaited presentation. 

Last modified: December 9, 2008

2 Responses to " A rant with a dash of rave "

  1. wyn says:

    Easterners do indeed become wimps after a winter or two here. I also have a horrible memory of the times of yore of weeks of snow piling up but it really seems to me that any Canadian city that is used to snow wouldn’t still have whole streets that have a layer of packed-down snow that’s turned to ice, nor would there be such a lack of salting on sidewalks so that you can safely walk 6 blocks instead of waiting for the transit that has shut down.

  2. Walrus says:

    Watch out. According to an article in the Vancouver sun article, Vancouver has some of the most unhappy people in the city right now :). It’s based on some blogging bot that scans blogs for words like “I feel […]”

    All this snow apparently made Vancouver go even higher.

    http://www.wefeelfine.org