Victoria Snow Day! Bus accidents and Linda blown home

Snow Day! The AVERAGE temperature for this day over the last 30 years is 8 degrees C (50’s), but it is blowing snow hard, accidents abound, it is with wind, a temp of –17 C., and the library as well as most offices have closed early. It is an official ‘snow day’ and not the kind of NICE snow days I remember as a kid.
I remember snow days where lots of snow fell and the snow plows couldn’t plow all the roads so school was cancelled. I don't remember THIS kind, where the roads were snowed over in an hour, then frozen by the wind while the wind blew light cars and trucks into the oncoming lanes and traffic.

Here is a Victoria Transit Bus which slid backwards downhill causing a 12 car pileup (weather network: you think I wheeled out to verify?).This is one of the hazards of working in Transit, that regardless of weather, you don’t show up for work, you don’t get paid AND you get a mark on your record. But then, since Victoria is essentially a mountain top which sticks out of the sea, almost all routes have hills, and some very severe hill slopes (particularly near the university). On an icy road, it is impossible, particularly with a double decker bus to make it up the top of the hill, regardless that the number 14 and number 11 are the two most common bus routes. A crash is a suspension as is flipping over a bus (which happened last time it snowed like this here, I saw the bus).

Linda and I had planned to go to the library as I wanted to go wheeling. Linda told me when giving me my pills that there was no point, as it was snowing and she went at 2:00. So here is Victoria a month ago, and the 'good sun days', while here is poor Linda by the time she got towards the library: the major road she was on had disappeared under the white. And while there the library announced it was closing due to snow. Since to get to the library I have to go up and then down a hill, wheeling there is a worry. Going up is not the worry (if possible) so much as the short and steep hill near home, as little skinny wheels can make a great sled downhill, with just about as much control and yelling as I had when flying toward the road on a sled as a kid.

I was up late today due to a 3.5 hour nap to try and make up for the lack of sleep on the weekend when I did postcards. I had tried to ‘push’ my body by shaving hours of sleep and working mostly through the night. It seems that the pain may be under control but not my health as what I could do previous, I cannot do now: I had a seizure and was paralyzed for a while and had to sleep and try again in the morning. But we did get 71 postcards done, and with the 39 done last week that makes for 110 postcards in two weeks.Postcards in winter are a good thing (summer for those down under).

This weekend was all postcards, but last weekend we had gone to the Award Winning carver of soap, often written up in newspapers, as she has a two weekend Xmas sale. She had her usual lemons, pears and Asian pears but also some Xmas tangerines as well. Plus she sells bars of her all-natural soap in blackberry, kiwi-lime and a host of other delightful scents (the blackberry sells out quickly while the kiwi-lime is very addictive, Linda got us both). She carves the clams and seashells of the seashore we are used to seeing, as both soap carvings and right into her bars of soap. And because she lets me come early, so I avoid blocking the whole Xmas house she has made, I was able to get one of the carved vellum books, with a seashell in the cover, all carved from soap. I am a bibliophile, even when it is soap, all things books related make me hum. I also got one of her ‘mini fruit’ samplers, which have a mini pear, lemon and tangerine all in one as they smell lush and look great.The soap sampler makes a great Xmas present for putting by the bathroom. I estimated that the sampler and the carved vellum books (of which there were only four) would go quickly, and not be seen until next year (not that I am a 'hoarder' or the like). I have done most of my shopping for Xmas presents, I just need to be able to arrange to mail them out now.

I can see why many Canadians go south for the winter, particularly if this very atypical weather continues. While many would blame global warming, I prefer to use the ‘buzz phrase’ from 10 or 15 years ago and blame ‘El Nino’ which, if flowers turned out smaller or the plums were lopsided, everyone would go, “El Nino!” which made no sense to me then or now. Global Warming makes more sense to me, but since it involves several hundred million people dying, I prefer to live in a fantasy about that; though with wheeling, and my cycling and running before that, I actually clean the air by sucking all that smog into my lungs and breathing out clean carbon dioxide. If I could stick a tree in the backpack of my wheelchair, I think we would have an oxygen balance….if I could ever wheel anywhere with a tree attached to my wheelchair.

Good day for staying inside and watching the snowwhile holding some mulled wine, going to use that mulled wine mix we picked up in Chatto’s in Pasadena (Linda made us a cup of red mulled wine last night with it and it was Yum!). And hopefully it will soon return to the 'kind and feathery' snow that is associated with 'white Xmas', cat girls and Robert Frost poems as opposed to 'The Cremation of Sam MeGee' style snow, which is blowing in our window cracks now.