Glorious weekend content

I work in a half an hour; better make this quick.

It snowed like a banshee here in Calgary last night.  I was not expecting it, but it wasn’t entirely without excitement.  I mean, for quite some time we’ve been having cooler weather.  Not cold, no.  And you won’t find me bitching about temperate climates: I like ‘em when I gets ‘em.  But snow can be fun, and I’ve been itching to try out those new winter tires that my Dad spent so much money on; nothing like enjoying the fruits of someone else’s labor (and being immensely grateful, of course).

So, when all untreated roads were transformed into sheets of ice last night it was the perfect opportunity to put my Ultra Grip Ice’s to the test.  It started as soon as I rolled out of the SAIT parking lot and the van in front of me started spinning out trying to get up a small hill.  He slowed and slowed and slowed until finally his tires were just spinning.  I pulled out and passed him, flipping him the bird as I rolled by (certain parts of this story might have been embellished).  The ice was no match for my newly installed radials, and no cumbersome van was going to slow me down. 

Things went well until I saw 14^th street was backed up infinitely.  This last Tuesday I was stuck in traffic for an hour and a half when I tried to drive down to Mount Royal for my class but found that Crowchild had been closed down at 33^rd due to an accident.  I didn’t want to get into another marathon session of working the clutch, so I detoured over to Teira’s house and we went out for dinner at Saigon Y2K.  I assumed that after a couple of hours the traffic would have died down.

Now, I don’t subscribe to the same saying that many other people do.  You know: “When you assume it makes an ass out of you and me.”  That’s ridiculous.  I say: “When you assume, you’re usually right.”  Because most of the time you are, and if you’re always wrong just start making better assumptions.

This was one time that my assumptions were wrong.  After dropping Teira off and trying once again to head North I saw that the traffic situation had still not changed.  It was about 8:30pm at this point.  It was going to be another long ride home.  I wanted to avoid 14^th because it looked so awful, so I instead opted for Northmount.

Northmount turned out to be a bus graveyard.

Things went smooth until I got East of 14^th street.  After that there were about a dozen busses pulled over on the side of the road, too afraid to brave the icy hill that Northmount turned into.  Their fear was well founded, that hill was treacherous.  Even with my fancy new tires I got completely stuck, and if it wasn’t for the troupe of 10 or so people pushing cars up the hill mine would probably still have been there this morning.  They were like angels.

In the end it only took me a little over an hour to get home.  So yeah, that still sucked, but I know those tires got me out of a couple of slippery situations that my old tires never would have.  In that sense, I think it was a pretty good drive.

Comments

[gs]

It's always nice to have angels around eh! I assume they weren't really angles, though that may be city slang for white folk. Not all up on that.

Now all you need is a four wheel drive, but that's your buy. Either that or keep an eye out for those angels or whatever they were.

[Elijah Stauth]

When I said angles I just meant that they were helpful people. Since race has nothing to do with anything that happened, I certainly wouldn't bring it up.

[gs]

Yea, but you spelt it rong. It's ANGELS not ANGLES. The first is a spiritual being, the last is ... well, it's something off of 180 degrees. Like a 90 degree angle.
I spoofed the white folk idea on the idea of Anglicized. Kinda trying to make a play on words.

Sorry about that.

[Elijah Stauth]

Yikes! Darn typos.