As the white stuff continues to fall and some of us might be getting depressed about the fact that spring seems a long ways off, it might be worth taking the time to muse over all things snow (hey what else are we going to do until March?)....
......like, gee where was all this stuff last January and February when the world was making tracks for Vancouver and Whistler for the Olympics?
Obviously Mother Nature wasn’t on board with B.C. hosting the world last year as taxpayers were on the hook for trucking snow from Manning Park to Cypress, which seems ridiculous when you look outside this year. Actually it seemed pretty ridiculous at the time too but I guess they did what they had to do (although Cypress might have been a tad optimistic host for events in the first place).
The Games turned out pretty wonderful in the end, all those gold medals and emotionally charged moments like that hockey game and such, but we were the butt of some late-night talk show jibes in the early going (why would they allow the Winter Games to be held where they don’t have winter, etc.) and it created a lot of anxiety for organizers and fans, not to mention costs for the rest of us.
Which makes all the snow this year (apparently Mt. Washington on the Island has a couple miles deep of the stuff) more than a little ironic, but then that’s weather-dependent situations for you and why I could never handle being responsible for running a business that depends solely on the weather (although they all do to a certain extent). I have enough trouble with being responsible for stuff that you actually have some control over, although ultimately in this control-freak era it’s kind of funny to see us humans tripped up every so often. Ha, ha........
.....and I honestly don’t mind shovelling the snow that much, as I’m finally getting some help from my kids and it’s good exercise and fresh air and it’s fairly light these days.
However, I sure notice people’s different approaches to maintaining their driveways and stairs. Some are amazing. Obviously some are out before they go to work, dutifully clearing the snow before anyone tramples or drives on it to keep the thoroughfares clean of any possible icy patches developing later on. I salute you.
Then there’s yours truly. Usually being in such a rush in the morning, I just have time to clear four narrow lanes for my wife and I to attempt to back up our respective vehicles down our driveway without compacting the snow and making it impossible to clear later when we have more time. Alas, my back-up skills or my geometric calculations, or maybe both, are way off and I end up veering off the cleared-off paths almost instantaneously creating hard-packed tracks that permanently (for a day or two anyway) display my inadequacies for all the neighbourhood to see.
However it should be noted there are some that are even less concerned with snow removal than yours truly. I would call them the “it’s-all-gonna-melt-anyways crowd,” and I do sympathize as I’m probably closer in spirit to them than the spic-and-span set.
So there’s room for all in my world, unless you happen to be one of the few who thinks it’s OK to move the snow on your property onto the roadways. It’s not. It’s more than just annoying, as well as unCanadian, and if I believed in bylaws I would say we need one to deal with this problem.
Instead I’ll just say it’s common sense and good manners to deal with what falls on your property on your property and you shouldn’t expect someone else to pick up after you, especially when it can cause driving difficulties for your neighbours. Nuff said.....
......and is anybody keeping track of snowpack this year as our water rates get hiked dramatically yet again? At least we should be able to fill our pools this year, it will just cost a lot more. Luckily my blow-up one doesn’t take too much H2O.