When the ice and snow don't move
I've ranted on here before on inconsistent snow removal in my town. Of which Lileks says in an indirect manner:"Rant on."
The Twin Towns have it a bit worse than Go. More traffic brings those things on. I couldn't imagine biking in winter in the Twin Towns unless I lived at the very least 3 miles from work. A near impossibility there with the expanse of space that exists to put up buildings clear out to the edges of St. Cloud and still call it the Twin Cities. Here, things don't get much more than 5 miles out and then you are on the tundra, alone, drifting.
I've been on 4 wheels for most of the last 2 weeks. This is mostly due to trying to ward off a cold and arctic temps. But it is also due to the dumpage of great amounts of snow which typically takes 2 days to adequately move. Yet it snowed for a few days in a row. That's when shovels and plows relax a little.
Traffic compacts the snow but it also creates this light and usually light brown slippery snow. I find this a lot biking on the side streets. Even with studs this type of snow is difficult to navigate through. And the worse part these sidestreets don't typically get plowed. They become virtual ice sheets once the temperature drops below 0.
Back to the Lileks column. So he writes about someone else who writes that the municipality is not doing its job (snow removal on public property) yet enforces its citizen to removal snow on their property. It happens and it indeed sucks. I run into such problem on the pedestrian bridge on use. There was a time that although it had been a week or more without snow but this bridge was still unplowed. Then to make matters worse it melted a bit and then the refreeze came. Danger, Will Robinson! I stopped using it for a few days. Fortunately the city did clear the bridge.
Yet sometimes I don't know who to be more disgusted with. I encounted some major snow drifts on a sidewalk on a busy one way street. It was practically the whole block of sidewalk covered with 3 feet of snow!
Well, hopefully the ground hog thing is wrong and we don't get plummeted with more snow.
Too bad Vancouver can access all this stuff.
The Twin Towns have it a bit worse than Go. More traffic brings those things on. I couldn't imagine biking in winter in the Twin Towns unless I lived at the very least 3 miles from work. A near impossibility there with the expanse of space that exists to put up buildings clear out to the edges of St. Cloud and still call it the Twin Cities. Here, things don't get much more than 5 miles out and then you are on the tundra, alone, drifting.
I've been on 4 wheels for most of the last 2 weeks. This is mostly due to trying to ward off a cold and arctic temps. But it is also due to the dumpage of great amounts of snow which typically takes 2 days to adequately move. Yet it snowed for a few days in a row. That's when shovels and plows relax a little.
Traffic compacts the snow but it also creates this light and usually light brown slippery snow. I find this a lot biking on the side streets. Even with studs this type of snow is difficult to navigate through. And the worse part these sidestreets don't typically get plowed. They become virtual ice sheets once the temperature drops below 0.
Back to the Lileks column. So he writes about someone else who writes that the municipality is not doing its job (snow removal on public property) yet enforces its citizen to removal snow on their property. It happens and it indeed sucks. I run into such problem on the pedestrian bridge on use. There was a time that although it had been a week or more without snow but this bridge was still unplowed. Then to make matters worse it melted a bit and then the refreeze came. Danger, Will Robinson! I stopped using it for a few days. Fortunately the city did clear the bridge.
Yet sometimes I don't know who to be more disgusted with. I encounted some major snow drifts on a sidewalk on a busy one way street. It was practically the whole block of sidewalk covered with 3 feet of snow!
Well, hopefully the ground hog thing is wrong and we don't get plummeted with more snow.
Too bad Vancouver can access all this stuff.
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