Tag Archives: snow

Get out the shovel

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I’m not doing my usual exercise this morning. Instead, Ill be heading out to shovel my driveway as my morning physical activity. After spending months with a herniated disc last year, I don’t plan on pushing myself with a weights workout before tackling the snow. I already know that I’ll be continuing with the shovelling when I get to school this morning too.

I’m not a fan of the snow, I make that pretty clear quite often. I am a warm blooded Bajan who would rather sweat than feel chilled any day. But I don’t mind shovelling snow. I put on a lot of layers of clothing. I also put on headphones and listen to a podcast and get into a rhythm where the work becomes a series of meditative motions. I even like the sound of the shovel scraping against the ground. And finally, it’s rewarding to see what you’ve accomplished.

I don’t think I’d like it as much if it snowed every day, but where I live I end up shovelling snow a maximum of 10 days in a year… usually a little less than that. So, I’ll get the shovel out and plug away without complaint, and admittedly, I’ll kind of enjoy it… And I just found out it’s a district wide snow day! I still have to get myself to school, but everyone else gets the day to stay at home… that’s ok, too. I hope to get a lot done today… after the shovelling!

 

Standstill

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The snow came later than expected. The temperature drop was expected, but the timing was perfect to create chaos in a city with limited snow removal capability.

I live on a hill, and last night my wife and I couldn’t get home. She spent hours stuck in traffic. I was at work quite late and when I left I made 3 attempts to get up the hill. The first and third attempts were blocked by firefighters, redirecting traffic away from the hill. The second attempt involved watching cars slide down two different hills that I was forced to avoid, finally finding my way back down to the main road my school is on.

I did a u-turn at the last attempt and ended up going to a Pho restaurant a block from my school for a warm, slow dinner. Then the main hill that I use going directly up from my school was open and I had an uneventful drive home. That’s not nearly as bad an experience as my wife being in the car for over 3 hours, mostly standing still and waiting, and finally having to go several kilometres out of her way to approach our house from the opposite end.

Still, we were more lucky than the cars that slid uncontrollably into each other on some of the hills we couldn’t get up. (That’s the hill that would have been my 4th attempt to go up, had I not u-turned and headed back to my school).

Our neighbourhood is very hilly, and we end up having events like this once or twice a year. What brings our city to a standstill though is not snow, it’s ice. It’s conditions where the snow comes, it gets compacted by cars, and then the temperature fluctuates above then below zero to liquify and then refreeze the compacted snow into sheets of ice. Hills, ice, and traffic don’t play well together.

This morning I won’t be trying to drive down the hill I came up last night. I’ll drive over to the main road that I know will be cleared since it is a major artery for traffic… (even though that’s the hill that had the most havoc last night). I’ll get to work earlier than usual and make sure the parking lot is safe. But I’m lucky that my school is on the bottom of the hill, closer to the river, and likely not as icy and snow-covered as some of our schools that get much more snow than us. Hopefully the chaos of last night is over.

Snow dump

It amazes me how a big snowfall can shut down the Vancouver Lower Mainland. My parents were visiting and returning to Toronto last night, and while many flights were cancelled, theirs was just delayed an hour. That meant that last night after shovelling my driveway for an hour I got to sit in traffic all the way to the airport and back.

I saw cars parked sideways, stuck on medians, and stuck on hills. I was detoured by a fireman then followed a set of cars into an alley that was too steep for the car 3 ahead of me and had to reverse into another snow-filled alley. And I also ended up waiting 6 lights to turn left at an intersection on the way home.

It’s not like the weather was unexpected, yet it seems local drivers were caught unprepared. It happens at least once every year here. This region never seems prepared for large volumes of snow. Drivers seem to think they are better in the snow than they are, and people get stranded and cause major delays. It’s a winter ritual, and while I usually avoid most of it, being fortunate to live very close to my work, last night I got to see the chaos of ill-equipped cars without snow tires, and ill-experienced drivers without common sense first hand.

Hopefully most of the roads are clear this morning, and people take it easy on their way to work and schools. Be safe out there!

The sound of snow falling

I love the lack of sound sometimes when it snows. The sound of an absence of sound is what I’m trying to describe. There is a kind of muffled silence that is produced by snow silently landing around you, while all surfaces are covered by puffy snowflakes.

It’s empty, but not like a void.

It’s silent, but somehow not noiseless.

It’s solitude without loneliness.

It’s the sound of snow falling, but there is no sound.

Image by Sheila Stewart

Be careful out there

If you want a lesson on overconfidence you need not look farther than Vancouver Lower Mainland drivers in the snow: Speeding, tires spinning, cars fishtailing, passengers pushing… and parked cars stuck on angles or with hazards flashing. A good snowstorm out here means mayhem on the streets.

However, if you ask people if they are a good at driving in the snow, probably 85% will say better than average, and at least half would say they are better than most. Do the math, that’s a lot of cocky, overconfident people! This reminds me of the ‪Dunning-Kruger effect:‬

‪In the field of psychology, the Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which people assess their cognitive ability as greater than it is. It is related to the cognitive bias of illusory superiority and comes from the inability of people to recognize their lack of ability. Without the self-awareness of metacognition, people cannot objectively evaluate their competence or incompetence.‬ (Wikipedia)

I’m not a perfect driver by any means, but in snow I slow down, I might gear down, and I look around… I’m far more aware of other drivers around me. I’ve hit black ice before, and for those that have never experienced this, it’s scary at any speed. It’s a humbling experience driving a car that you have no control over. It wakes you up to the potential danger.

Today I share a caution. Slow down! Be cautious. Be defensive. A few years ago I lost a dear friend, (who was the safest driver I knew growing up), to a snowstorm accident.

Be careful out there!