Wednesday, January 10, 2007

This is just too much excitement for me

IMG_4942_1I must admit to feeling some pangs of anxiety when I woke up and saw snow outside. I had two meetings to go to up at SFU but since snow makes me paranoid, I bowed out of the first one, which was to take place around noonish. Good thing too, because the streets out there were a mess and the snow was falling in flakes the size of quarters.

Eventually though, it started to lighten up a little. I saw a hint of blue sky out there, and the news on the radio said that the snow was clearing up and so were the roads. I checked the SFU road conditions and found that everything seemed to be clear.

I set off just as the snow started again and made it up Clarke Hill without much incident, except that at that time there were two stalls that had completely blocked traffic on its way down. Trapped in the lined up traffic behind the stalls was an ambulance, its lights flashing ineffectively and a snowplough unable to get to the three or four centimetres lying on the pavement and causing so much trouble for the cars ahead. Not that it would have mattered much. The snow was falling so fast that it was impossible to keep even the main roads clear.

Things weren't all that good at Production Station either, because one by one, the busses started to come down off the mountain only to drive off somewhere else with their 'sorry, not in service' signs on. Translink sent a supervisor over to tell us that they weren't sending any more busses up or down the mountain because conditions were too dangerous.

This wasn't that big of a deal for me, because the falling snow made me progressively more paranoid about being outside and not being able to get to school gave me a good excuse to go home. Gradually people began to disperse from the bus stop. The girl who had stood in front of me in the line just stood there and shrugged. Her bags of groceries pinned her as a rez kid. I hope she made it up the mountain somehow. She didn't have a jacket with her.

I phoned a friend to let her know that I wasn't going to be at the meeting, only find out that she was stuck there, perhaps for the night, and her friend had apparently been on a bus that had slid out of control into a fallen tree on its way down.

It doesn't matter which direction you choose, it seems that all roads lead downhill from that point. Down steep hills with an increasing amount of fluffy ski powder for you to slide in. I chose the route with the smallest incline, which may have added a good two hours to my trip home, but did wonders for my peace of mind. The rest of my trip was uneventful, except for the fact that my last bus broke down halfway home so I walked the rest of the way.

I could show you pictures of snow, but frankly I've seen enough of it. I made some curried eggplant and tomatoes for dinner. You can look at that instead.