deductive reasoning

When you look out of your front door and see this...

We did not take this car. Instead, we took the heavier one.

It might be prudent to stay at home.

However, there is nothing in me that just screams prudence, so we went out and ran some errands.

Shot through the glass of a local coffee shop - what are errands without coffee?

Part of our running about involved a trip out of town on back roads to my parent's house to pick up my daughter who was visiting with them.

We saw this.

oops... it is still in the middle of the road

Further down the road, we saw this.

note the lane plowed on each side of the car - it is exactly in the middle of the road and very stuck

Applying deductive reasoning to what we saw brought me to the following conclusion. White Mazda 3 driver suffers a loss of control of the vehicle. Likely, they whapped a big drift in the dark last night. Poof, into the drift. Not getting out.

This is fairly obvious.

Driver calls for help. Taxi comes and gets them. Picks them up. Crests hill on the way back into the city. Mires car in deep drift.

Has to call for help.

I have no idea if that is what happened or not, but it is a fairly comical story if true.

Incidentally, we saw the taxi owner trying to tow the taxi out of the drift in the middle of the road with a light weight Suzuki car. I wish I had had the time to sit and watch. The Camry hybrid in the drift was significantly heavier than the car doing the towing...

Hopefully, he rescued his cab without wrecking anything.

keeping the shiny side up

There are times when being Canadian is a real treat. One of those is the winter time. Many people who live here, myself included at times, despise the winter but the trick is to find something to do in the winter that is fun and then do it.

I call the realization that this is the case the "Well duh!" moment.

Enjoy the winter, and have fun, or be miserable. Decide. Well duh.

Which brings me to the subject of today's post.

Our employer (my wife and I work for the same employer) decided that it was too nasty out to come to work and closed for the day. The wind chills locally are reaching to -40 Celsius. Kind of chilly. This left us with a day to use for our own amusement.

So naturally, we went on a date.

And then, we went drift surfing in a winder wonderland.

Definitely a good day to keep the shiny side up. Mind you, aren't most days?

winter landscape

My favourite part of ice storms has to be the aftermath. Also, winter has some of the best sunsets.

post storm drive

Lo and behold, the sun came out. Excited by this after a couple of days of mixed precipitation, I headed out in my trusty car with my trusty camera to see what I could see.

First, I had to get into the car. The driver's door was frozen shut, but I managed to get into it via the passenger side, and thumped the driver's door into an open position. This had nothing to do with the ice storm and everything to do with Volkswagen's single irritating design flaw in the MKIV Golf. Namely the door seals. The door curves up into the roof line, and the seal has a large contact patch on it. It is one of those old style "felt" like door seals, which fits well, but water can seep through it to be shunted away by the seal under it. Naturally, it freezes shut the minute the temperature drops below freezing. It always has, and always will. Pain in the ass.

Once in the car, I had to wait a few minutes with an idling engine so that I could see. Moisture and frost on the inside... Sigh.

Finally, I head out!

And the sun is gone.

Undaunted, I go anyway, and created these pictures for you:

This one is my favourite of the bunch

a walk on the wild side

We had our ice storm. The alerts are all done and gone. While it is still a bit slippy out, and there is some freezing rain coming down yet, the worst near where we live is finished. Thankfully, we are with power as a lot of local people are not. Rumour has it that those without power may not end up with their power back until Christmas Day at the earliest. I hope for their sakes that this does not happen - most modern houses need electricity to stay warm and cannot be heated without some form of power supply.

Anyhow, I managed to get in a bit of a walk.

It was quite eerie. There was a lot of damage from the ice build up on trees. Branches were everywhere. Even the smallest gust of wind made the trees creak and groan as ice cracked off of the branches.

The light was also marvelously diffuse, which made for some nice photography.

In all, I walked 12km and had a good time doing so.

an idea of how much ice was piling up on the twigs - it was quite a lot

some of the damage in the uptown

usually, we can bike under this, but not today

am not too sure how long that one will remain standing

these people were just too cute as they slipped about and took pictures

perhaps the best example of what I was seeing everywhere

down the tracks - note how much the evergreen is bending

how could anyone not see the beauty of winter?

waiting... personally, I would wait somewhere else rather than in a glass hut with branches falling...

down and out

we`ll be happy when the ice worms nest again

Good ice today. Lots of crackling outside. My family won't let me go for a walk and take better pictures than what I can take from the back window though - something about branches falling down...