The Squamidian Report – March 14 / 09
Issue #355
Including:
The Ontarion
Hi All,
Shades of winter all over again! And the worst part is, it is MY fault. After all, if I hadn’t made use of some of those nice mild sunny days by getting out on the motorcycle, those nice mild sunny days would have stuck around. But no, I had to go tooting around on the Harley and now December has returned to the west coast. You know, just like when it rains whenever you wash your car, the season reverts back to winter when you get your bike out. December had been a month of bitter cold arctic air piled up over the BC Interior that spilled out through the valleys and fiords where it mixed with the moist ocean air. Same thing all over again!
Last Sunday saw snow squalls throughout the Lower Mainland that tied up traffic and sent people scurrying for warmth. By Monday morning Vancouver was under a snowfall warning and the hilly streets were too slippery for the city busses to run on. Fender-benders were so common that the traffic reports had to stop trying to list them all. Over in the Nanaimo area they had blizzard conditions at times. Nanaimo is in the direct path of those strong arctic winds as they funnel out through Howe Sound. Here at the top end of the Sound we had nose-hair freezing temperatures from those same outflow winds as they blasted right through you. However, because even though we are at the top end of the Sound, we are 40 km inland and we are therefore away from the moister air over the open water. We had mostly sunny skies.
For Monday and Tuesday, our daytime highs were lower than our ‘normal’ night times lows are supposed to be. Wednesday morning saw new cold temp records set all over the province, breaking the old records that were set over 50 years ago. The locals are simply not used to –15 wind-chill conditions when they should be out tending to their flowers. Over in Victoria they are a month behind in holding their annual blossom counting festivities and are continuing to postpone them. A couple of years ago we had those open, almost warm winters where the snowline never dropped below about 4500 ft. At that time the climate specialists where convinced that there would never be snow in the mountains again and that we were experiencing an out-of-control warm up. We are now stuck in our second below normal cold winter and the same people are convinced that we are diving into a cold cycle where the west coast will experience winters similar to the interior parts of the country for the next 30 years or so. The current implication is that we will revert back to the kind of winters that most of us grew up with. The kind of winters that were very hard, brutal at times and where streets were like tunnels through the snow banks and country roads remained impassible for weeks at a time. The kinds of winters that were a hardship, as opposed to the winters of the last three decades that have been more of a nuisance than anything.
Its all pretty silly when you thing about it. Knee jerk reaction to a cold snap. A week from now we could be above normal again and the same people will be jumping the other way. What I do know is that it is very dry here and has been all winter. Not many people notice it because it is winter and what snow we had is taking over two months to melt away. But as an example, February had only 40% of its normal moisture. We’ve had an incredible amount of sunny weather when it should be the rainy season. The North Shore mountains have a deep snow pack because of all those episodes of Arctic Outflow air meeting the ocean air right over the coast but by the time you get inland as far as Whistler, there is a very real lack of snow. If Whistler didn’t have snow making equipment they would be out of business right now.
Anyway, by Thursday afternoon the temperature had crept up to about +10 in the shade and the low teens in the sun so I decided to taunt the weather gods again. I took the Harley out for about an hour and a half. Rode in to West Van and back. It was kind of weird riding past some frozen waterfalls that were hanging motionless off some of the north facing rock faces that never seem to get any sunlight along the highway. But the riding was good, and the bike rumbled along just fine. However, those weather gods did notice that I had gone out on the bike again because by Friday afternoon it was overcast and the rains moved in a few hours later. Now I will just have to wait until those gods have either forgotten me or forgiven me, and hope they don’t take those rides personally and turn the rain into something that I will have to shovel.
doug
****
****
Hello
everyone!
We’re
only 9 days away from spring I think they said on the news the other day. Nine
more days till spring has sprung. I can hardly wait!
When I
think back to all the springs I’ve waited for in my life it astounds me! I’m no
kid anymore but I can still remember many of the fun times I had alone as well
as with my friends. When you’re a kid, every change in the weather or change of
season brings new adventures. I can remember many springs walking home from
school during the big snow melt when by the time I was a block into my trek I
had transformed into a pirate captain skippering my bi-masted brigantine
through rough seas in a challenging squall. This I managed to do simply by
launching a Popsicle stick into the swift churning water that flowed along the
curbside toward the next storm drain grate at the corner of the street. It was
very cool with the “ship” making its way over the lumps and bumps of ice still
melting along the shoreline. There were times when the ship would disappear
under an overhanging shelf of towering ice scraping the tips of its masts on
the underside, reappearing unscathed on the other side of the tunnel. The
adventure was in the navigation across the uncharted waters rather than the
usual battles with the King’s galleons laden with untold trunks full of gold
coins and treasures. I could and did get lost in my imagination many many times
when sailing the gutters of the streets surrounding my neighbourhood. It was
always fun and it always made me forget my troubles for a while as I sailed my
way across one of the seven seas of the world.
Pirate
ships and treasures were just a couple of the imaginary experiences I had as a
kid. I remember hearing about the Wright brothers and their Kittyhawk flight
and of course every kid wanted to see what it was like to fly like a bird. I
used to make wings out of sheets of cardboard and slipping my arms into loops
of string to hold the wings on I would jump off the front porch of our house to
see how far I could glide. It really did seem to give me momentary suspension
in mid air! This fancy with flight or flight of fancy has always been with me
and when I was in grade five and they asked us what we wanted to be when we
grew up, I said I wanted to be a pilot. At first I wanted to fly one of those
beautiful gold coloured CF100’s that the RCAF pilots flew in the aerobatic
flight team “The Golden Hawks”. They were all the rage at the air shows that my
dad used to take me to. We saw them at the then “Waterloo Wellington Airport”
in Breslau. That airfield wasn’t big enough for them to land but they would fly
in from Toronto and do their show for KW and then fly back to Downsview. They
were GREAT!
This
“jet” fascination lasted until one weekend when a new television show made its
debut on our black and white “Spartan” TV. The show was called “Whirlybirds”
and featured two guys that owned a charter helicopter service at a small
airfield somewhere in the Midwestern States. They flew very cool Bell
helicopters that carried two people inside a glass bubbled canopy. The way they
were able to land anywhere and switch from metal runners for landing on dry
ground to pontoons so they could land on water was amazing. I did some research
at the local library and found that there was a company in Downsview near
Toronto that flew charter helicopters and I wrote to their president to ask how
I could learn to fly one of these incredible machines. He actually wrote back
to me and sent a few pictures of his fleet of “Whirlybirds” along with an open
invitation to visit his company anytime my dad would take me there. He also
sent a book along that explained how a helicopter operated. I must have read
that book a hundred times in the first few months after he sent it to me. Of
course as time passed, the novelty of wanting to fly a chopper changed to
thoughts of being a SCUBA diver, an explorer, a racecar driver and any number
of other exciting occupations that caught my attention. The one job that never
entered my mind until much later in life was that of a “Firefighter”, imagine
that!
I have
had a ride in a helicopter but thoughts of flying one disappeared many years
ago!
I guess I
could have achieved greater heights in my life than having a career as a
firefighter but at least it was a noble and solid job and was much more
rewarding than becoming a Pirate! LOL! Now that I think of it, it wasn’t very
realistic to have aspirations of becoming a Pirate but it was fun. The only
guys I know of that became a sort of Pirate were those that entered politics!
Hahahahaha……!
That’s
all for this week folks!
Thanks
for tuning in and I look forward to talking to you all again next week in The
Ontarion Report!
Bye for now… Greg.
PS:
Something To Think About>
Whatever
hits the fan……..will NOT be evenly distributed.
PPS: I
still have a fascination with flying but only on the end of a string. I love to
fly my kites! (Still a kid at heart I guess!)
****
Have a good one..
the doug
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