Day 344 – A little taste of winter

December 9, 2016 – Vancouver is getting a little bit of cooler weather and little bit of snow to remind us that we actually do live in Canada 😉

I do love the snow, and I’ll take it over rain any day. Some people retort that you don’t have to shovel snow…..but I’d rather be outside shovelling snow than getting rained on. (And to be fair, I don’t really mind rain that much, I just dislike being wet when I don’t intend to.)

The snow brightens everything up, it makes the world quieter, it’s peaceful. And even better, it makes it feel like Christmas really is coming.

However, living in Vancouver, snow also means traffic chaos because people don’t drive to the road conditions, usually don’t have snow tires, and are predominantly terrified of the white stuff. It makes for a nasty drive pretty much anywhere. Smart people have properly equipped their vehicles, take transit, or just stay home and enjoy the change in the weather.

When I lived up North I used to love when it would snow in Vancouver, it meant there would be some entertaining compilations on the news, cars sliding slowly down hills, people locking their wheels and steering straight into telephone poles, summer tires galore, cars with only a fraction of the windshield scraped so the driver could see ahead only. Oddly, this week the fun footage came from Montreal, a city usually used to winter driving conditions, and one that typically makes fun of Vancouver’s ineptitude. Turnabout is fair play, and it’s pretty epic  🙂

Then I moved here and discovered that there is a little bit of forgiveness I have to give to some drivers; the snow here is very different from the snow back home. For lack of a better term, Vancouver snow is (usually) slick and “greasy”. And that makes it all the more imperative that people either get proper tires or simply stay away from their cars if they are ill-equipped, unprepared, and inexperienced at driving in winter conditions; there simply is no excuse for going out in a car in winter conditions in Vancouver unless you are.

Monday’s snow made for an interesting drive around Vancouver when I was picking up two people for a drive down to the US for a conference. Lots of snow, but I just took some side roads which, although messier to drive, had fewer cars on them and therefore moved, albeit slowly. After picking up the first fellow and en route to collect the second, he decided to use his Blackberry for driving directions. The route wasn’t what I would have done, but I decided to try it, and it was almost a mistake. The route took me a way that probably would have been fine on a normal day, but Monday wasn’t a normal day. When we came onto Gilmore Street I realized there was a big hill ahead and was a bit concerned about the icy road, particularly when we crested it and found three buses spun out, and half a dozen cars in variously wrong places on the road. A few cars were spinning their tires and going nowhere.

I paused for a moment, and then decided to trust what I knew were good winter tires, the all-wheel drive, my experience (although largely unused for a very long time), and a slow foot. We drove slowly down the hill, went around two buses and an SUV pointing the wrong way, and made it to the bottom without incident.

Once I had both passengers int he vehicle it was a short jaunt to the freeway where I knew I would most likely have clear sailing all the way to the border. But it wasn’t entirely without incident. I headed straight for the HOV lane and was making excellent time when we started across the Port Mann Bridge, but I wasn’t prepared to be nailed with slush bombs falling from the cables high above the bridge. We were busy chatting when I glanced far up and saw the falling snow and ice and pulled back on the gas but was slammed by a huge chunk of slush, half on the windshield, half on the hood. No panic, though it was shocking, no brake slamming (that probably would have been very bad), just gas off, slow down, wiper on quickly, and start dodging the next falling chunks, wait for a traffic break, and get the hell out of the HOV lane – it seemed to be taking the brunt of the falling debris.

Amazingly, there was no damage to the vehicle, but I heard later on the Seattle news that there were numerous vehicles that ended up with smashed windshields and other damage. (http://www.cbc.ca/1.3884159)

116 Photos in 2016 – 115. Gate or gates