What's the worst thing about winter?

Four to six hours of daylight a day, which I get to see about twenty minutes of at lunchtime.

Can’t send two large, energetic, but young boys outside to play at -30C. Although I threaten to. A lot.

Truck starts, though. We plug that in.

Wet socks from where the boys ran through the house in their boots.

Cold floors, especially in the bathroom.

Backpacks wear out really really fast. Plastic doesn’t hold up well at -30.

Plastic zippers on winter coats. Although your tongue doesn’t freeze to it, it wears out quickly, and then your parka doesn’t zip up.

If it’s good 'n cold, the city bus doors have been known to freeze open.

And my biggest one.

I realize I am an evil smoker, and directly responsible for every case of cancer since the first one I lit. However, I resent being forced into the forty-fuckin-below to have my smoke. I didn’t bitch about being relegated into the basement break room, cramped, dank, poorly ventilated and crowded. But now the only place I can have a smoke outside my own house is in a bar. Until next year, anyways. And some anal-retentive, self-rightous cow is petitioning city council for a limit on how long we can warm up our cars - it seems it offends her that we smokers are sitting in our cars at break time so we can have a cigarette someplace WARM.

I just moved to Long Sault, because I’m on a work placement at a General Electric factory.

I walk 3.3 kilometres (just over two miles) along a narrow, two-lane highway to work each morning for 7, and walk back when I’m done. The shoulders get cleared, a little, but not right away by any means. The road runs from a windy river valley up to the windier summit of a hill that overlooks the St Lawrence Seaway. It gets very cold.

I’m discovering that occasionally I’m able to get a ride with one or another of the workers at the plant, but most of their schedules don’t fit mine, or else they commute in the opposite direction to Cornwall. Long Sault is too small to have a public transit system, or I’d take that. I left my skis at my parents’ place up north, because I don’t have room for them, and there isn’t much of an easy route to ski.

But actually, except when it’s very bitterly cold and windy, I enjoy the walk. So this isn’t the worst thing about winter. The worst thing, bar none, is that the only semblance of a grocery store in town just closed the week before I got here. There’s still a convenience store, but they’ve only got milk, eggs, and junk food. (Four churches, no gorcery store – talk about living on bread alone.) Oh, and there’s a pizzeria and a tavern.

The nearest store is in Ingleside, about 10 km up the highway. That’s a long walk. Cornwall is 12 km in the other direction. I’m looking at a way to do this, keeping in mind my very limited student budget. It’s a good thing I like puzzles :slight_smile:

The worst think about winter in Pennsylvannia=PennDOT.

I love everything about winter, except for how dirty my car gets. Can’t stand it.

Living in Houston, I look forward to the milder temperatures. However, I have been skiing in Colorado, whose winters I hear is nothing compared to the damp, heavy winters around the Great Lakes.

In Colorado, I found the weather outside to be quite invigorating. What I did not like was that inside every building it was way too hot. The restaraunts. The bars. In our hotel there was no way to regulate the temperature by room. We slept with the windows open. There was a fireplace, but no way in hell would we have a fire.

Just because it’s way below freezing outside does not mean I want to be inside at 80+ degrees. That’s way too warm

I hate the fact that my school turns the heat off over the weekends and overnight, so by the time it gets warm enough to be comfortable, it is time to go home.

Working evenings.

I work in a warehouse on the south side of a six-lane highway. Due to the nature of public transport, the buses which run on the south side of the highway only start leaving their terminus at rush-hour: 2.30 pm. Which is when my shift starts. The only bus on that highway which runs all the way through the day runs on the north side.

So, to get to work on time: I take bus 1 (stop is on the lakeshore. Holy shit, that’s a cold wind) from my house to terminus. I take bus 2 to bus stop on the north side of the highway. I walk for twenty minutes, on streets with no sidewalks (hello snowbanks) and over an overpass.

Do you have any idea how windy it gets 30 feet up? It’s minus 30 degrees Celsius here BEFORE windchill.

Because it’s 80 here and 12 there.

Oooops, that’s the good part. :smiley:

For me, the worst thing about winter is the fear of falling. I never have empty hands, I always have a child (or two) and/or a bag (or two) and/or groceries or a briefcase, or the dog, or something which affects my balance which isn’t so hot to begin with. Couple that with slippery conditions and I’m always afraid of taking a spill.

How many times have I fallen in snow/ice? Four, in my lifetime.

But I live every winter in fear of having to walk somewhere which isn’t obviously ice free and well treated with ice melter and anti-skid. I spend far more time than I’m happy with trying to find parking places near doors, not because of the cold but because I figure that the smaller the distance I have to travel by foot, the lower my chances of a wipeout. There are more than a few times when the weather is messy when I make the choice to skip non-essential errands because of the condition of streets and sidewalks.

I shouldn’t be so afraid, but I am. And that is the worst part of winter, hands down. I need to either learn to suck it up or move back down south.

Just be glad you don’t live in Newport, VT.

Thursday night. Mostly cloudy with a chance of light snow. Brisk. Lows 20 below to 25 below. Northwest winds 15 to 25 mph. Chance of snow 40 percent. Wind chills 40 to 50 below.

We have had a pretty open winter in Iowa so far. We have had a couple times when the TV weathermen got a little hysterical but only one or two snow falls that were worth shoveling. I’ve only worn the deep winter coat twice. It was nearly forty degrees yesterday or the day before. I figure it’s all the hot air from the guys who for some unaccountable reason want to be President. The caucuses are next Monday. It will be twenty below with eighteen inches of snow and a stiff wind from the Northwest on Tuesday.

I do feel for all you guys in the Northeast. We’ll get ours sooner or latter. If nothing else we can count on the annual girls’ basketball tournament blizzard.

I hate how the winter makes the brakes and gears on my bike freeze up so it’s hard to ride. To the point where they break. And then I have to fork out 8 bucks for a daily subway pass. :mad:

Worst thing about winter?

The dread expectation that in just a few months we’re going to be burdened with hot, sticky weather, again, exacerbated by critters of the Order Diptera. This weather is such a relief.

God, me too. I’m a walking shock machine. When I peel off my sweats at the end of the day, I can feel the charge walking down my legs. And I hate it! Especially the car zapping me all the freakin’ time!

Snow.

Shoveling it, cleaning it off my car, driving in it, getting it in my shoe.

This isn’t the worst thing, but since nobody else has mentioned it yet, I’ll add: the way my hair gets messed up when I have to wear a woolly cap.

That can be resolved by the wearing of a swimming cap under your wooly hat.
You’re welcome!

So yesterday after I started this thread I felt kind of bad about it … “Oh, winter,” I thought, “Maybe you’re not so bad after all.”

And then I tried to get home.

I waited for half an hour for a streetcar (which in theory runs every five minutes or less). When it finally came, it inched ever so slowly along Queen Street and came to a grinding halt about halfway home. The driver informed us that there was some kind of ‘incident’ up ahead and she had to detour. So I had a choice of getting off then and walking a few miles west, staying on and walking a few miles north, or staying on until the detour was finished and walking a few miles east.

I did get to see a disabled streetcar, tho, which was kind of neat. They don’t get towed, they get pushed by another streetcar from behind ! Cool !

And I was thanking my lucky stars that I wasn’t one of those poor saps stuck waiting for the streetcar which was never going to come.

So, I figure it’s karma. If I hadn’t bitched about winter, it wouldn’t have been so mean to me !

Nice winter … niiiiiice winter … [backs away slowly] …

Just for the record, a woolly cap is called a “toque”, pronounced tuke. That’s one of Canada’s contributions to the English language. :smiley:

What I hate most about winter - scraping the ice off my car, brushing the snow off my car, sitting in a freezing car on a freezing seat while waiting for it to warm up so I can drive, freezing hands from driving in a freezing car, the cd player in my car not working until I get two blocks from where I’m going because it’s too cold, trying to drive in icy conditions, other asshole drivers in icy conditions - that’s about it.

Oh - about the static problems - to reduce static in your hair, use a light leave-in conditioner. It virtually eliminates it.

I have a sneaking suspicion that would just make it worse :wink: