Preach it, brother! When the professional driver says it, all you Calgarians who think your SUV is completely immune to icy roads, believe it!
I was born and raised on the Prairies. I feel a twinge of discomfort driving to the local mall in the middle of this large city without full winter gear, a blanket, and a candle in my car in winter, much less going cross-country. We rarely go anywhere in winter that isn’t on a busy highway where we’re likely to get help if something happens, and we still put the emergency gear in the car. It’s winter - it can kill you.
And those Calgarians who, while believing their pickup or SUV is immune to regular driving on icy roads, but who also believe it’s great fun to tromp on the gas and go fishtailing up the icy residential street, knock it off!
To paraphrase everybody’s mother: “It’s only fun until you cause somebody to lose _____.” You can fill in the blank with the object of your choice: their car parked at the curb, their spouse on the sidewalk, their child playing…
I can wear wool. Thick wooly sweaters, classy tartan skirts, striking tweedy or herringbone jackets. Wool clothes just look so much better on me than the summer stuff.
Walking the dogs on a crisp winter day when the snow has just fallen. An odd plus: it’s much easier to find the dog poop in the snow.
I can curl up to read my book with a fluffy comforter, hot drink, and a roaring fire. A cold drink and a book just don’t have as much comfort appeal to me.
No mowing! No bugs. Dogs have stopped their shedding.
I can wear fun boots that make my legs look nice! I don’t like my legs, and hate to wear skirts in the summer. But I have no problem showing off a nice pair of boots!
Hate:
Shoveling
Wet feet. There is nothing more annoying and uncomfortable than cold, damp feet. Forget hellfire. A true hell would be a place with constantly cold, wet feet.
Scraping ice off my car.
Driving in nastiness. If I could be the only car on the road, I may not mind it so much. I can deal with defensive driving, but in Baltimore winters, sometimes you have to go with flat out paranoid driving.
Likes:
-Rescuing peope who have run off the road, can’t move up the hill, car won’t start, etc, in spite of making realistic efforts to adjust to extant weather conditions.
-Shoveling snow off my elderly neighbor’s walk and driveway.
-Being able to stay cool enough at night.
Hates:
-Idots who make no effort to adjust thier driving to extant weather conditons.
Slush
Driving on ice and snow
Having plans canceled because the weather gets too bad to move around
Going to work in the morning with the temperature at -5 degrees F
Scraping my windows
Barely seeing daylight for months in a row
Love:
Like everyone else, the quiet calm of a soft snowfall
The pristine looks of undisturbed snow after a storm
A decorated Christmas tree in my living room
Christmas lights on houses
The look of Christmas lights glowing under a drift of snow after a storm
A cozy night at home with hot chocolate and a movie
Since becoming the Bus Guy, and in charge of 150 + school buses on a daily basis, my entire perspective on winter has changed. Here’s where I stand now:
Hate:
Cold
Snow and almost everything about it
Ice and almost everything about it
Darkness
The holiday season
Heavy, drab winter clothes
Going out with the group–the boots, the hat, the scarf, the gloves–and keeping track of all that throughout various excursions. The very thought makes me want to take a nap.
Love:
Get a lot more reading done
Don’t need sunscreen
The long winter’s nap (I would never take a nap in the summer. Come this time of year I am ready to hibernate, almost literally I think)
Love:
[ul]
[li]Blue Nights: When the ground is covered in deep snow and there is a full (or nearly so) moon in a sky without clouds, Rayleigh scattering of the light reflecting back up through the snow gives the whole world an electric blue glow. (It may not be Rayleigh scattering, but it does happen and it must be dependent on how much snow is on the ground.)[/li][li]Black Nights: Heavy snowfall can completely obstruct all light from the outside and make the view out my window densely black as basalt.[/li][li]Crisp Air: Air with minimal humidity and less heat goes down like a liquid, chilling as it settles down to the lungs.[/li][li]Cold: I like a nip in the air and a lack of sweat and the feeling of acclimating myself to a 40 degree day.[/li][li]Grey Skies: Thick clouds lay like woolen blankets over the snowy ground. They block the direct sunlight, which can get intense here, and make the whole sky glow dimly.[/li][li]Snow: A thick garment for the frozen land.[/li][li]Heavy Clothes: I love my heavy coat and my lined jeans and my thick socks.[/li][li]Chili: Mmmmm… chili. Homemade chili is more ground beef than anything else, but still contains copious amounts of red beans and celery and potatoes. And spices.[/li][li]Christmas: Sometimes Thanksgiving, too, depending on the year. (Some years, Halloween can even qualify as a winter holiday. It’s rarely sustained cold from Halloween to Thanksgiving, though.) Homemade cookies and bread and other foods. And gifts.[/li][li]Chinooks: Some places call them “indian summers”, but around here a brief period of warm weather in the middle of winter is a chinook. It is brought by intense winds and creates happy Montanans wondering at melting snow and ice.[/li][li]Frozen Mud: It doesn’t stick to anything, it doesn’t slip you, and it crunches when weight is applied.[/li][/ul]
Hate:
[ul]
[li]Ice: I hate slipping on ice. What I feel about driving on ice is something altogether worse.[/li][li]Mud: What happens when snow and ice melts. Gumbo sticks to everything and slips you and is capable of swallowing a shoe without even a belch.[/li][li]Intense Cold: It’s painful. The nip is now a relentless pain all though any exposed skin and the crisp feeling is now razors on your esophagus and if you feel like you’re acclimating, you’re in the late stages of hypothermia and are delirious enough to kill yourself.[/li][li]Thaw and Refreeze: This turns pleasant hard-packed snow into standing water, which gets refrozen into treacherous glazed ice.[/li][li]Glazed Ice: It’s as thick and hard as concrete. (Harder, actually.) It sucks the heat out of anything resting on it and is quite capable of bruising or even shattering bone. It can lurk beneath a fairly innocuous layer of water after a partial thaw. It waits for me. I know it.[/li][/ul]
[QUOTE=Derleth]
Love:
[list]
[li]Blue Nights: When the ground is covered in deep snow and there is a full (or nearly so) moon in a sky without clouds, Rayleigh scattering of the light reflecting back up through the snow gives the whole world an electric blue glow. (It may not be Rayleigh scattering, but it does happen and it must be dependent on how much snow is on the ground.)<snip>[/li][/QUOTE]
Ah, the blue nights. It sounds familiar, but here in the orange city, I don’t think we get those any more.