It's interesting to read the Ottawa Citizen and see the headlines complaining about the weather on the front page:
TEN CENTIMETERS OF SNOW! WINDS UP TO SIXTY KILOMETERS AN HOUR!
Wow. That's rough.
I've reached the point where I don't consider it 'windy' unless the winds are higher than 80km/h. Sixty is simply your normal everyday situation here on the island.
Also, while St. John's winters are not half as cold as Ottawa winters, and while we probably don't get as much cumulative snowfall, what we get comes all in a rush. One day it's all green, then you hear a loud FUMPH! and it looks like spring has never come to the city. On Sunday, just in one day, we got 35 centimeters of snow. It's a fine, blowable snow, too, so we have four-foot drifts that are a pain in the ass to shovel. Fortunately it occurred to me to get our shovel out of the shed last week, because there's no going near that place again until spring.
To top it off, not living in the nation's capital means that city maintenance infrastructure is piss poor in comparison. I will never again complain about the snowplows in the city of Ottawa. The people who work those machines are pros and deserve medals.
The plow system in St. John's is PITIFUL. They do it all wrong. Instead of hauling ass down the major streets AFTER it stops snowing and then taking on the side streets, these plows will be out at the first sign of snow, peeling away layers of asphalt as they scrape up the tiniest bit of snow that has accumulated on the roads. And their attempts to plow the sidewalks (when they decide to plow the sidewalks) are laughable. Every fifty meters you'll see a patch where the sidewalk plow has made a pass, leaving several inches of snow still on the ground. The rest of it is just pushed up crusty snowbank from the street plow. And the places where the sidewalk plow have been are then covered over instantly by another pass of the street plow. The result is the 'sidewalk' is now an uneven terrain replete with jagged chunks of ice. Honestly, it's safer to face Newfoundland drivers and walk in the road, which most people do.
Now, I know that comparisons are not really fair. There are different economic conditions in St. John's than there are in Ottawa. The terrain is entirely foreign, too, as the constant freeze-thaw temperatures wreak havoc with snow melt, and the streets here are wicked steep and winding. The sidewalks in most of the city were built as an afterthought, and so often contain obstacles, such as poles, trees, and people's front porches. More than once I have seen a disabled sidewalk plow stuck to a pole.
But it's sad to see the plows get stuck due to their own incompetence. One of the lawyers at the firm here told me the other day that he rescued a plowman who had gotten himself stuck in a ditch while clearing the road. I've seen sidewalk plows (on the rare occasions that I do see them) get boxed in by street plows. They barely use salt, and I've never seen any form of grit on the streets. The whole system is ridiculous, and extremely dangerous.
But for some reason everyone seems to continue along the same way they always have. Newfies are tough stock, and they don't seem to do anything the easy way. I'm working on a transcription right now of a fisher from the Burin Peninsula, and he talks of the days before radar and GPS, how they used to take their boats out in thick fog and just steam up and down until they found their buoy markers, a process that could take several hours. So that should give you some hint as to the Newfoundland character. But this persistence can be seen as stubbornness, and sometimes stupidity.
Three times since the snowfall I have seen cars stuck, not in snow, but in the icy sludge left by the plow. In all three of these situations, the car in question was on a hill, trying to get to the top. Instead of simply putting the car in reverse or neutral and having it slide out of the sticky spot with the help of gravity, all the motorists just gunned their engines, spinning their tires to create a patch of solid ice. They are just so stubborn.
I had more to say on this but I've now forgotten. There are a million things about this place that irritate me, and now it looks like, with Andy switching into a double major degree, that we might have to stick around an extra year. I may indeed go well and truly insane. I shudder to think about Andy's mental state after I abandon him in this crazy place for eight months.