The Squamidian Report - Jan.4/03
Hi All,
Well, we dropped Ryan off at the airport
for his flight home last Sunday. It was a bright sunny day but we were all saddened
to see him go. The up side is that there is already plans in the works for him
and Emily to work in Whistler for the summer.
Sue drove to the airport as I was busy in
the back seat playing with my GPS. You would have to try awfully hard to get
lost with one of those guiding the way. This is really cool, I had set some way
points on the way to the airport, mainly the local Hortons, the shopping mall
in West Van and the Vancouver airport itself. When I got home I uploaded them
into the map program on the computer.
For anyone who is interested, the
co-ordinates of our house here are:
49 44.726N
123 06.210W
We are in the season where the eagles
congregate here. One of them swooped down over the van and its wings were wider
than the van. It was like being buzzed by a small airplane.
We got up Monday morning and saw the
results of a west coast snowstorm. There was fresh heavy snow almost to my
knees. Unlike Ontario snow that comes down sideways, this stuff came straight
down, covering tree branches, and fence tops etc. Looked like a post card. It
took us an hour to shovel the driveway. I had to shovel a path for Tracy, it
was over her head so she had no place to go.
My Toyo winter tires let me drive up to
Warren's. The only vehicles that are supposed to make it up his road are 4x4s
this time of the year. He plows it out with the Uni-mog but it's still a
logging road, steep, twisting and ruff. I'm still getting used to how the
changes in elevation effect the weather. What is rain in one place is snow in another.
It can be foggy in Vancouver and sunny in our area.
New Years Eve was quiet for us. We are not
into wild celebrations. We like it kind of boring so Warren and Janice came
here for a good old fashion roast beef dinner and some guitar music. We were
all falling asleep by 10:30. They went home and we continued to fall asleep.
Sue worked in the office Thursday and
Friday. She had a pretty dark, rainy drive in on Thursday. We get wave of west
coast winter storms blowing in off the ocean. They tend to dump about 4 inches
of rain in 8 or 10 hours, then move on. A day or so later we get the next one.
Friday afternoon we were between storms, we had sunshine and 14 degrees. These
storms tend to pack very high winds, leaving downed trees and power lines. Our
valley here seems to be missed by the worst of it but large areas of Vancouver
Island and the lower mainland keep getting blasted. Our snow from the beginning
of the week has retreated to the higher elevations.
For anyone who might be interested, I'll be
visiting Ontario in late January. I fly into Toronto on the evening of Fri.
Jan. 24. Ryan will be picking me up at the airport. I fly home on Sat, Feb 1.
Anyone up for a party??
Have
a good one..
the doug