hermit in the snow
Nov. 30th, 2006 06:29![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
piranhaah, back from a long power outage, which got me another 5 hours of sleep, so i am mostly on a daytime schedule now from the 100% nighttime one of last week. i was wondering when the snow accumulation would get the power to fail; it always does eventually. we have huge amounts of snow, but fortunately so far, because it got cold right after the first big dump of about a foot, the snow isn't as heavy as it was in the bad year when lots of structures and trees were destroyed.
having stayed up til 9:00 in order to go and provide the cats with sustenance i spent an hour digging the truck out from under its covering. the bad aspect of the freeze was that the first bit of snow was very wet before it kicked in, so there was a layer of ice at the bottom. *ugh*. i let the engine melt the bottom of the pack on the hood for half an hour, and then hacked it into large pieces and slid it off. the windshield was helped by the internal fan. but no help for all the other windows on the cap; *ugh*. sometimes i use hot water, but i actually figured the exercise would be good for me, since i've been hermitting for a week. the landlord's son was grumpily shoveling around their cars -- they always do that, *heh*. me, i cherish our 4x4; it's got no problems getting out of the parking spot, nor with the steepish driveway either.
then i drove down to southgate to buy catfood and manfood. <rant> too many people are idiots. that's a mere 6 km drive and i saw two accidents that had just happened, nevermind the slipping and sliding at the lights. comments i hear about that usually say "well, people are not used to it". indeed, we don't have a lot of snow. but we get one or two snow falls a year, usually accompanied by freezing, and the last 4 years one of the falls has been massive. how can you not learn your lesson after the first one? i doubt these are all people who have immigrated from latitudes that have no snow or ice at all. no, it's that a lot of people are idiots and drive too damn fast in their puny, light speed mobiles. i saw how many passed me, and i was in a 4x4 vehicle going 50 km/hr, able to brake at the lights without sliding. if you were going the speed limit (70-90km/hr) in a regular 2WD vehicle, you were going too fast for the conditions. this is why i don't like to drive in this weather; i don't actually mind the conditions much, i just hate the idiots. </rant>
but none of the idiots got me into an accident, and i got cat food and half-price steak and veggies and garlic and mandarin oranges and some new black cherry/vanilla coke, and it's back to hermitting. snow keeps falling, though much more slowly now, there's just another 3 inches on the car since noon.
(i was gonna point out how this post is 100% BSG-free, but the music foiled that.)
having stayed up til 9:00 in order to go and provide the cats with sustenance i spent an hour digging the truck out from under its covering. the bad aspect of the freeze was that the first bit of snow was very wet before it kicked in, so there was a layer of ice at the bottom. *ugh*. i let the engine melt the bottom of the pack on the hood for half an hour, and then hacked it into large pieces and slid it off. the windshield was helped by the internal fan. but no help for all the other windows on the cap; *ugh*. sometimes i use hot water, but i actually figured the exercise would be good for me, since i've been hermitting for a week. the landlord's son was grumpily shoveling around their cars -- they always do that, *heh*. me, i cherish our 4x4; it's got no problems getting out of the parking spot, nor with the steepish driveway either.
then i drove down to southgate to buy catfood and manfood. <rant> too many people are idiots. that's a mere 6 km drive and i saw two accidents that had just happened, nevermind the slipping and sliding at the lights. comments i hear about that usually say "well, people are not used to it". indeed, we don't have a lot of snow. but we get one or two snow falls a year, usually accompanied by freezing, and the last 4 years one of the falls has been massive. how can you not learn your lesson after the first one? i doubt these are all people who have immigrated from latitudes that have no snow or ice at all. no, it's that a lot of people are idiots and drive too damn fast in their puny, light speed mobiles. i saw how many passed me, and i was in a 4x4 vehicle going 50 km/hr, able to brake at the lights without sliding. if you were going the speed limit (70-90km/hr) in a regular 2WD vehicle, you were going too fast for the conditions. this is why i don't like to drive in this weather; i don't actually mind the conditions much, i just hate the idiots. </rant>
but none of the idiots got me into an accident, and i got cat food and half-price steak and veggies and garlic and mandarin oranges and some new black cherry/vanilla coke, and it's back to hermitting. snow keeps falling, though much more slowly now, there's just another 3 inches on the car since noon.
(i was gonna point out how this post is 100% BSG-free, but the music foiled that.)
no subject
on 2006-11-30 17:07 (UTC)no subject
on 2006-11-30 17:35 (UTC)Ridiculous.
We've got a few inches of very powdery snow on the ground which of course turns into incredibly slick ice when compacted and partially melted and then refrozen. So the streets are pretty dangerous here at the moment. Which makes it even worse. Most of the people on the street have no business being there they don't have the skill required to be driving and it's pretty much a miracle that they make it anywhere without crashing.
no subject
on 2006-12-01 15:28 (UTC)SUVs
on 2006-12-01 22:17 (UTC)beyond that, do you both live in well-off areas?
the island isn't particularly wealthy (though it has a couple of indecently rich pockets). i don't think i've ever seen a humvee with local plates here, and the SUVs tend towards older or smaller models rather than those from lexus or mercedes (heck, you can almost buy a house here for what those cost). also, we actually do have communities that are served by unpaved roads, so driving an SUV isn't the kind of total overkill that it is in urban areas. i generally don't feel the SUV hatred that seems to be affecting a lot of people; they don't stand out here as either particularly ostentatious or driven mostly by idiots.
be interesting to check whether in your areas SUVs are actually more likely to get into accidents than normal passenger vehicles or pickups. does anyone drive pickups? i think they might be more represented in accidents here because a lot of teenagers drive one as their first vehicle, and because they require more skill to drive because of the weight distribution.
Re: SUVs
on 2006-12-01 23:04 (UTC)is what I was saying exactly to.
But I could just as easily say exactly to:
this is why i don't like to drive in this weather; i don't actually mind the conditions much, i just hate the idiots.
Idiotic driving is a huge peeve.
And FWIW I don't live in a particularly well-off area, but I definitely do look at SUVs and think that the owners are trying to buy their way to safety on the road. And since I can't see anything with one of those things in front of me, I get irritated and most of the time I think they are trying to buy their way to safety on the road at the expense of the safety of those of us in cars. But I'm not bitter.
Of course, my sister drives some huge monstrosity of a Jeep product, and she has lots of sense about most things. But about this she throws environmental concerns to the wind and prioritizes her own desire to feel safer in the snow (and she's in Michigan so they get lots of it) and see over the heads of the cars around her.
Re: SUVs
on 2006-12-01 23:53 (UTC)i like SUVs. i like them for practical reasons: more road clearance, higher loading area, better visibility. that last bit is not so much for looking over the other cars since where i drive for the most part there are not many other cars; i just like seeing more of my surroundings, and of the road ahead; a couple of seconds more warning of an obstacle feels like a good thing. and since i do go off into the wet woods on old logging roads on a regular basis, i like the 4x4 as well. but i don't like SUVs for their environmental impact, and that's a biggie. it might well be what will keep us from buying a (small) SUV, though at this time i am really torn about that. maybe we'll get a smartcar and dirtbikes instead. i will hate giving up the greater visibility; maybe i should get an ultralight instead, *heh*.
right now i drive a full-size pickup truck, which will have outlived its usefulness for the most part when the boat is finished. it's never been about the size advantage over people in passenger cars -- yeah, they can't see as well over or around me, but i can't see well over and around minivans, delivery vans, semis -- that's just a feature of sharing the road with differently sized vehicles, and i adjust by keeping more distance when driving (something a lot of other people seem strangely opposed to; i don't get it). i don't actually like driving the truck in urban areas, where looking over the tops of other cars is pretty much its only advantage, and not much of one. i feel it's ... too big and cumbersome in a city. bitch to park, always too damn close to the side of the road. if i lived in a city, i'd drive something much more small and agile.