Dragon V's Ramblings

Couldn't you ask them to bury the line? That sucks if it does that every time there's a bit of crap in the air.

Funny, I made the same reference to the city shutting down under these EXTREME WINTER STORM conditions before having read your post this morning. Good luck and be careful and be damn thankful I'm not on the road today :oPP

Bahahaha!

You have no idea what extreme winter conditions are!!!

Move up here to Canada, then you will know :P

I have no doubt that we "ain't seen nothing" as far as extreme winter conditions go. If anything its mostly sarcasm when we refer to the terrible weather... sadly its not an exageration that this city nearly shuts down with any little bit of snow or inclement weather. It also doesn't help that people just don't seem to understand the concept of ice on roads etc... so I can pretty much guarantee that we'll hear about 10-20 significant traffic accidents today.... and at least 2 or 3 of them will also involve a semi or other large truck.

One of the nice things out here is that our cars last just about forever because we don't have the whole salty roads thing going on, but at times like this you realize that not salting the roads can be a bit of a problem.

I lived in Boston for 5 years and had a car there for 2 of them and I was amazed at the crud that people drive/walk/jog through up north. I fully realize that Boston is not in the same league as Canada, but still once you get into doubl digits of snow, its significant... I'm just grateful I never had to deal with the multiple foot deep drifts that seem to occur farther north... yeeesh.

We get big drifts sometimes, but in Calgary we are situated so we get chinooks - which is a warm wind that blows up from the south and melts everything. It can raise the temp in the dead of winter from bone chilling cold up above freezing :)

So our snow here doesn't really stay that long. However it does make the roads icy. The snow melts and then freezes again over night. And salting and sanding make a huge difference!

You learn how to drive with the crappy roads, but usually the first day or two people still drive like the roads are clear... so we get accidents too.

The city only shuts down if there is so much snow that you have to dig out your cars and your door, and if we get an ice storm, so people slip and slide even doing like 5mph

LMAO!!!

I like winter, I like the snow... I just don't like when it's -30... but we don't get that very often.

Although last night it was down to -25C (something like -15F) brrrr

It was chilly and windy enough here last night that I only finished about 90% of the cigarette I was smoking during a commercial break between Smallville and Buffy last night....BRRRRR hahaha

LMAO!

winter is a good reason to quit smoking :)
that way you don't freeze your ass off as much

Heh, knowing Dave, I doubt that even winter in the coldest parts of Siberia would be enough to make him stop smoking. I suspect he would just hide in his truck or in some building that allowed smoking.... or he'd become an arsonist ;)

LMAO!!!

Actually, it's my fingers, not my ass, that tends to suffer the most hehe...b/c if it were my ass, then MAYBE I'd consider thinking about looking into the possibilities of a smoke-free life...but so long as I can slap on another layer of clothes, I don't worry about freezing much haha. Vic's right though...countless times my fellow smokers and I would stand outside of Hudsbeth Hall at school in the blustery cold while happily sucking on our cancer sticks. We didn't care, because we knew that in 10minutes we'd be inside anyway.

And if in Siberia, I'd just slap on another layer of clothes, put on a mask to cover everything but my mouth and learn to hold my cig with thick gloves :o)

I think that the coldest I've ever had to face while I was in Boston was last winter when it dipped to 9F + wind chill and one time my freshman year when it hit like 0/-2F + wind chill...... anything colder and I would probably just move somewhere warmer... oh wait ;)

hehehe

well 0F is cold... but you did the smart thing :)

Heh, well you never know, I think in a few years, I'll probably migrate back north (or most ideally) I'll split my time between New England and the Southwest.

Among other things, there's only 1 rugby team out here and playing for them would involve way too much travel.

hehehe - I'm in a city with lots of women's teams.
Next season I'm switching rugby teams, so I won't have to drive so far across the city :)

I wish I had it that good out here. The men's team in the city practices on the other side of town, that's about 45-50 minutes of highway travel with no traffic problems. I practiced with them a few times this season, but it was too much of a hassle considering that my work day can end anywhere from 3:30pm-8pm depending on work load.

What was most disappointing was that I could have probably played on the A-side in a few months. I definately had the size and agility for the team, my playing skills are just horribly rusty.

What I liked about playing out in Boston was that we could play just about every weekend and almost never have to do more than hop on the subway for a bit. I think our schedules involved traveling 3 or 4 times per season for tournaments and the rest of the games were played against local clubs.... then again there were a few games that we played in snow.... yeesh, I get frostbite just thinking about those!

BTW the snow is more or less officially gone.... so much for the great blizzard of '01 ;)

heheheh... the Great Blizzard...

My team (the one I've played for the past 7 seasons) is a div1 team, and we are the only one in the city, so we have to drive to Edmonton (3hrs away) to play games. It's not the best, but you get used to it.

Next season I am switching to a div2 team (which pratices much closer to where I live and the hospital I have class in)... and there are several div2 teams in the city, so we will only occasionally have to drive - to Banff and to Lethbridge - about 1-2hrs away.

That's the problem with having a large country with a small population - everything is so spread out.

Oddly enough, your last statement more or less describes most of the southwest :).
Normally I really enjoy driving, but I like having the option of doing other things and not always having to drive so much. A 100 mi. roundtrip just to go to practice 2x a week seemed somewhat excessive in addition to all the driving I normally do for work.

Still though somedays I really miss getting to play.

45-50minutes driving w/ no traffic?? Dude, that's like enough time to hit Las Cruces. Don't the Scorpians play at Dudley Field? That's like a 10min run from your house down the border no? hehe...i know you like to avoid lights but whoa! haha j/k :oPP

Uh, no, as I've said before, it takes 60 minutes to get to LC from my house. The Scorpions practice at Thorn Park which is basically at the far West end of town. Driving across El Paso can easily take 45-50 minutes. You know that.

Well, I guess we have to take into consideration my driving and lack for my saftey and the asftey of other drives, small animals and other misc. things that may be wandering the highway hehehe...but i know it would take Rae and I less than an hour to hit Mesilla through the backroads/scenic route, then just a quick 5min jump to las cruces. Of course, I've told you about Rae's breakneck driving and while I'm the safter of the two, I tend to put the hammer down out there as well :o)

That probably has something to do with it. Also, don't forget that once you have to exit the highways and maneuver city streets, you end up adding a lot of time to a trip. Once I got close to Thorn park, it was probably another 10-15 before I got there thanks to stop signs, lights, construction, bad drivers etc...

Also "less than an hour" + "a guick 5 min jump to las cruces" seems to get you pretty darn close to an hour. To clarify, it takes just about 55-60 for me to go from my place to Portia's in LC, but she lives towards the center of town-ish and close to the interstate so there's very little city driving.

Oh I'm sure it gets much much much worse up there. I had a friend that lived in Whitehorse, Yukon and she loved the fact that she could snowboard a good part of the year but had to suffer through REAL weather....

the "Extreme weather conditions" was just a nod to our easily-excited weathercasters here...actually, some people tend to freak out when the weather changes from it's usual "Sunny and clear" to anything involving stuff falling from the sky. Also, back in 1996 (i think 1996) we officially received 1" of snow and Interstate 10 in New Mexico had to be closed, stranding several thousand people who were on their way to see Metallica. The next day the "snow was so bad" the city quite literally shut down. No: schools, city gov't, etc. It was rather silly. People were talking about "The Storm of '96" yes...1" hahaha.... My LJ friend Hexadecimal mentioned the other day of 2' of snow from one storm in Minnesota. That sort of thing would essentially send people here into a total and complete panic. There would be a run on groceries and drinking water, the 1 pair of snow chains that were accidentally shipped to Wal-Mart here would be highly prized and fought over to the death, people would use grandpa's wooden leg that he got back in the war for firewood and many a cactus would get chilly. :o)

Someday, I'm sure they will bury the line, but as this would involve burying it for a fairly large area, I doubt that it's going to happen anytime soon.

Oh, btw, I'm most thankful for the fact that I'm not in a vehicle that you happen to be driving today.

you're welcome...