sympathy for the Haitians

[jay-ell]

Well good for all of you who live in places that own enough snowplows etc. Some of my neighbors didn't even own shovels and they were selling out as soon as they trucked them in so you couldn't get one for love or money. Someone I know even ordered one on Amazon hoping for a miracle that the delivery would get through (it didn't). If you resilient Northerners can explain how they can clear five foot drifts with their kitchen implements, I'm sure they'd be glad to know.

See, yeah. I mean, I grew up in the North, I lived there long enough to know how to handle snow and ice. But it's a whole different ball game in a place that doesn't get real winter weather often enough to invest the community's resources in dealing with it. When I go to Ohio at Christmastime and there's three feet of snow on the ground, you bet your ass I get in the car and drive around if I feel the need. But when we have 2 inches of ice on the roads in Raleigh and there's neither salt nor snowplows down, I keep my ass home -- not because I'm lazy, but because I don't want to wreck my car or get dead.

The "hunker down and let it melt" philosophy drives me crazy, but quite honestly it doesn't make sense for the city to buy a bunch of snowplows and have them sitting in storage 360 days a year. My Northern relatives, though, REALLY don't get this, and tease me about getting soft down here. Which, you know, gets a little grating after the first fifteen years or so.

[Carlos del Vaca]

The "hunker down and let it melt" philosophy drives me crazy, but quite honestly it doesn't make sense for the city to buy a bunch of snowplows and have them sitting in storage 360 days a year.

PREACH.  I wonder how many people wandering around bitching about NoVa/DC/Maryland's inability to plow their streets the first day after the snow, also rail against taxes at every opportunity.  Doesn't make much budget sense to supply the public works department with equipment to deal with a 100-year storm, when those storms only happen, you know, every 100 years or so. 

It's like the Tea Party protestors who complained when Metro wouldn't supply them with extra service.

[Asherdan]

The people who are bitching about the plow issues are the same vapid assholes who always figure somebody should do something about whatever is inconveniencing them right now. Fuck them in the ear.

Doooooods.

This:

Some of my neighbors didn't even own shovels...

It boggles my mind. Are you talking about a wide flat head snow shovel in particular (please please please) because if your just talking about a plain old $5 shovel (it'll work on snow just fine, that shit ain't bulletproof)...wow. That's like going somewhere and forgetting your towel.

Warm or cold climate, we all face challenges. I spent a bunch of time and effort spreading and thoroughly staking fiber web matting to my slope (digging footholds and crawling on a cliffside for a couple of days basically) and the gullywashers we've been having hasn't effected my property and safety. Some of those who didn't put in the preparation are paying the consequences.

So I'm sorry (no I'm not) but I really can't spare much sympathy for people who can't be bothered to set aside a milk crate of winter problem possibles in the garage/attic/etc. (candles, sterno, a small propane space heater, rock salt, simple shit) for that time every few years when The Big One hits and you need it to do just fine, although in less comfort, until business resumes as usual. Cold or warm climate, the ones who learn from this kind of thing will spend the time to think about how to stock it and put the stuff away. Then they'll sail through the next one.

If you resilient Northerners can explain how they can clear five foot drifts with their kitchen implements, I'm sure they'd be glad to know.

ALSO: Use a goddam potato masher to break up a line in the crust and then start shoveling with the biggest fuck*ng baking pan you own. Once you get a whole going you can keep enlarging from there. Expect to go in and warm up/change to dry clothes often and keep at it. This is your penance for not being a Boy Scout in an area that occasionally demands you own basic shit like a shovel.

So sayeth the candy ass SoCal boy, from the warm and sunny shores of the Pacific.

[Arachno-capitalist]

Those of you not in The Snow Zone may not have this phenomenon, but Ive noticed every single time its about to snow, the news does a reel interviewing people rushing the hardware store for hundreds of shovels. What do these people do, throw out their shovels every time theyre done? How many times do people in the NYC metro area need to buy shovels?

[wombat]

Those of you who live in Southern California and/or are not old enough to own homes, maybe don't realize that, for one thing, snow shovels break eventually under hard use, so even people who were prepared in advance might find themselves without.

As far as the idea of clearing entire sidewalks with a baking pan or even a gardening shovel, I'm going to assume that's a joke.  I laugh too when NC shuts down for two inches of snow, but I am perfectly well aware that it's because it doesn't make sense to expect them to clear it with a baking pan.

[Asherdan]

Whatsa matter, you freeze your sense of humour, baby? Yes, the baking pan was half of a joke so at least you understood the concept.

Shovels break when you leave them outside and rot the wood of the handle or act like a dumbass and over stress them by taking too big a bite. My $5 Ace Hardware flathead has spent the last decade shoveling snow, ice, mud, hoss shit, sand, rocks, cement, etc. etc. etc. because, funny stupid me, I take care of my tools.

And yes, I've shoveled and de-iced stairs, sidewalks and driveways with a standard sized flathead every goddam year with it. It works just fine if you're not lazy.

This lazy cowshit SoCal boy lives an hour from for-real snow and gets out and about it regularly, this time of year. But then again, a shovel is something I pull out and use every friggin day rather than once or twice a year.

Yesterday evening I dug out and re-bedding the outside part of four hoss stalls, 16'x12' each, working with a shovel and a wheelbarrow to slew out the urine and piss drenched soggy muck down a good 18" and then rebedding with fresh dirt I had to shovel and barrow over. By lantern light on a 40 degree windy evening in knee high galoshes.

I did it in two and a half hours because I am neither lazy nor weak minded and I was prepared with the proper tools. Didn't break any of them, either. But if I had you can goddam sure bet I would have replaced them at home depot by now.

[wombat]

Well I wish YOU lived on the end of my block Ash, because obviously you'd have tunnelled a route through the ten foot pile of snow that has been deposited on the corner by the plows and I'd be able to cross the street without walking in the middle of traffic.

But you don't, and so I have spent the week doing stuff like carrying pugs back and forth from a hotel down the middle of the street because we had no power for three days, and I am still waiting to see if the Tech Staff ever gets back from Utah where he has been stranded since last weekend. So, yeah, it's not really funny anymore.

[Asherdan]

You're right, I would have put a shovel to that issue by now and knocked on my neighbors doors to shake their asses out and turn a hand to as well.

But then, I'm fucked up. When my neighbor on one side got lighting struck I went out in the shit and helped him staple plastic sheeting up. The guy on the other side, I pick up his mail and take out his trash and mow his yard when he's out of town (commercial pilot). But the two families across the cul-de-sac? Bunch of insular shitholes who want nothing to do with me. Tough titties on them, when the Big One hits they won't drink my water or eat from my food.

My point? Take cookies to your neighbours in the good times so they put themselves out in the bad times.

I hear you about being tired of the crap. I put the RV in the driveway and we have been sleeping (and cooking some days) in it all week. My house is being reduced to it's molecular components, should get it back sometime this weekend. It's self inflicted, and worth it, but I understand the upset incurred by the normal order of things being tipped over.

SIDENOTE: I woke before dawn and slid out in the dark to shoe a couple of new to me hosss. The second one sat on me while I was doing his right rear.

Later this evening:

Spouse: Honey, how was your day?

Me: A hoss sat on me and the guys from Malaysia yelled a whole bunch.

Spouse: Never mind...

[side_show]

I have no comprehension of why being able to function is dependant on snow clearing. Snow clearing is infrequent at best in my neck of the woods, and it has never been an issue that prevented me from dealing with day to day living.  Do people think snow is made of poisenous acid or something?  Do they not know it can be walked upon, with little effort?

The important thing to note is that all this fuss is about dependency on automobiles.  I'm not automobile dependant, and perhaps part of why I've chosen to make my life this way because of where I live.  It's not uncommon for this to be the case locally - a large number of my coworkers walk or jog to work.  Whenever myself or other Canadians are tourists to the states, the thing that is commonly remarked upon is how few pedestrians one encounters in the U.S..  I'm sure this isn't the case everywhere, but there is a noticeable difference in this regard everytime I end up in the States compared to my experience when visiting other Canadian cities.  I'm guessing there are many cities that are not designed to be livable without access to and use of a vehicle.  I was once walking around Grand Forks noting this to the person I was with (another Canadian) and we saw other pedestrians approaching, and it turned out they too were Canadian visitors when we asked - and we all had a laugh about it.  Then while visiting a friend in Minneapolis, I decided to walk to the Mall of America, which was about an hour from where I was staying, but as a tourist, I like to see each city I visit on foot.  Not only did I not encounter a single other person on my walk, but when I got to the mall, I discovered it was surrounded by freeway (thanks a lot MapQuest!), leaving me no choice but to climb a fence and illegally walk about a block on the side of the freeway to get to a place where I could safely cross.  

I do not/can not shovel snow since a back injury, and my husband is often out of town.  When or if I do shovel, it is using the same 15+ year old rusty steel garden shovel I use in the middle of summer for the compost and dealing with soil.  But this makes no difference because I walk most places I go, and there's enough pedestrian traffic in my area that the snow is commonly tramped down pretty quickly, often before I head out for work.  Like I said, snow isn't poisenous acid.  In my neighbourhood I'm lucky if the street gets plowed once a winter.  In some Canadian communities there is no snow plowing at all, and certainly there are many where side roads are never cleared.  Locally we've had two snow storms since the plow cleared our street (or any part of our neighbourhood, including major routes), which was weeks after a storm, and more than a month after an earlier storm.  

When it comes to automobiles, I have never owned snow tires in my life.  In a huge splurge, I bought a Hybrid SUV last winter, but before that it was 15 years of driving two-door rear-wheel drives all winter long.  But again, I've always depended on my feet as a major mode of transportation, so I commonly parked my vehicle for the winter.  I live walking distance to work and stores and such though, so the Hybrid is more for visiting our rural family.  Because an idiot rearended the Hybrid (while texting on his phone), it was in the shop over the Holidays, so we drove out to the country in the middle of a blizzard in the Ford Focus the car insurance provided us with this Christmas.  At the turn off to the dirt road to our family's place, there was a two foot snow drift, and we tried to plow through it, but got stuck.  Three cars pulled over and strangers pushed us loose, so we took a different dirt road, and got to our destination.  If we couldn't have taken another road, we would have walked - because we had expected possible challenges driving out into a blizzard, and had brought along extra layers of clothes thinking we might need them.  We did not consider this to be "snow-pocalyse" or whatever the news is calling the latest snow storm in the eastern US.  We considered this... life, and we planned ahead, and anticipated challenges, and when they came we dealt with it, without complaint and with the help of random strangers who also considered it a part of life.  

[side_show]

Sorry, I want to add that infrastructure-wise, the one thing we definitely benefit from is that Manitoba Hydro has decades of expertise at dealing with winter conditions, and so when power goes down due to trees or other things falling on the lines, they've got back up generators in place, and emergency staff out on the road immediatly doing repairs.  That's clearly a huge part of the problem that communities that don't typically experience heavy snow fall are facing.

[Asherdan]

We considered this... life, and we planned ahead, and anticipated challenges, and when they came we dealt with it, without complaint and with the help of random strangers who also considered it a part of life.  

Yep, that's the attitude that is not cultivated in some locales or upbringings in my experience. See my mention of the neighbours up there? I was seeing who were fellow travelers and who wasn't right off. Sad to say, in my area you have to check to find out who you can count on.

And the snow clearing thing? It's simple, people are ding-dongs. In my own kit I keep a set of tire cables and just expect to cable up and carry on if it gets thick. But on the heavy tourist weekends? I don't go out because, just like when we get real rainfall out here, people don't know how to drive in it and they do all varieties of stupid things that put themselves and others at great hazard. You dump 6" on 500,000 people who don't know how to deal with it and only see it every 6 years and weren't raised knowing jack all about it and you get problems. Many of the problems seem silly if you've dealt with it over and over but that's what happens when a large group of folks is stuck, unprepared, into an unfamiliar situation.

[wombat]

Smells, I walk most places too. The snow on my front walk is up to my hips. It may not be poisonous but I can't walk on snow that's up to my hips and I don't think most other people can either. And if finding it more than an minor inconvenience to have no power and therefore no heat for three days when the temps are in the 20s makes me a wimpy American, then sorry, I am a wimpy American.

One of my neighbors is actually shovelling out parking spaces, which is pretty noble. There was a brief period of people being friendly and helpful to strangers but unfortunately now we seem to be rapidly returning to the normal "assholes driving like idiots while talking on cell phones" mode, which makes it particularly hard to walk in the streets where the walks aren't passable. Oh well, I guess normal is a good thing.

[Asherdan]

The snow on my front walk is up to my hips.

Yeah, but on a normal sized person that's what, mid to lower shin level?

[wombat]

It's almost three pugs deep in places!

[Doc]

Just wanted to say there aren't challenges living everywhere.

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