Well, that was an . . . interesting week, weather-wise in Prince George.
You know there was a fair bit of snow when you see pictures on Facebook of a group of people pushing a city bus out of a stuck position. I mean, I can think of a couple of reasons you probably wouldn’t see that in, say, Vancouver.
First, if they had that much snow, the city would have been declared to be a disaster area and everyone would have been ordered to stay home.
Second, maybe it’s my northern B.C. cynicism shining through, but I can’t see Vancouver people teaming up to push a bus.
I’m not saying we’re used to those sorts of conditions up here, but I also saw a few posts from people saying they had seen people pushing a stuck vehicle, had pulled over to get out and help, and before they could, the vehicle was on the road again.
I also found out last week (again) about the joys of driving a small car. I believe I have mentioned before that I drive a Toyota Yaris. It’s a great car for gas mileage (because ‘gas kilometerage’ doesn’t have the right ring, does it?) and gets me where I need to go – most of the time.
Unfortunately, it also has a clearance of about two inches, which means snow conditions like last week saw me having all kinds of fun.
I live in an apartment building off a street which is definitely a low priority for plowing, unless it’s garbage day. And my understanding is that last week, even being garbage day didn’t guarantee cleared streets because the snow just kept coming.
My apartment building parking lot is also up a rather steep incline from the street, and we have a lot of trucks in the parking lot normally.
That meant even if I could plow through the snow on the street AND get up the hill into the lot, I would be driving into even more churned-up snow throwing my little care in fourteen different directions at the same time.
One day last week, I decided I was going to park on the street overnight, figuring walking where I needed to go for a couple of days wouldn’t hurt me. I made the mistake (as it turned out) of trying to be nice and safe by pulling well off the road.
Well, well off the road put me into a snowbank, and when I tried to move the next day, it wasn’t going to happen. I got exceptionally lucky when I called for a tow, because they had a driver who was just clearing another call quite close by. I wish I had gotten his name, because the driver not only got me out of the bank in short order, he then paced me up the street and onto Fifth Avenue to make sure I didn’t get stuck again.
I didn’t, and I now think I have survived the worst snow storm I have seen in quite a while. A lot of snow, but warm temperatures and no wind, so it definitely wasn’t a blizzard.
We’ve already had enough of those this winter, thank you.