Prince George went from 0 to WINTER in 12 hours!
The ground was bare, brown and cold on Thursday afternoon. Around 4 pm as my students showed up, they were covered in big fluffy snow flakes.
When we woke up the next morning, the kids shoveled the snow up into banks on either side of the driveway.
By 10am, I had only 4 students who had not called or emailed to cancel, so I sent out a mass email and canceled my Friday.
It would not be so bad if the bus had routed past our house, but the map has the buses turn up Village Avenue a block away, so our street is a mess when it snows. It takes a few days for the snow plows to find us.
I had that feeling of wealth that comes with a sudden day off. I can do whatever I want to do for as long as I want to do it!
"Let's go to Ric's Grill for lunch!" I suggested to Shawn. He was not hard to convince.
So Shawn called the restaurant at 11:10 am to make sure they were open on this snowy day. I prepared for the day, even curled my hair, and we ventured out to the car. The driveway was lovely and smooth, thanks to Lydia and Forrest's early morning efforts.
We backed into the street and got stuck.
A neighbor offered to help as Shawn went about the un-stucking process.
Shawn got the car back into the driveway and we decided to walk.
We are northerners! We have good boots, gloves and toques. So much for the hair.
And we had all day!
Shawn and I were both in good spirits and getting really hungry as we marched down the middle of the white street, observing the occasional abandoned compact car, stopping to clean the wet snowflakes off my glasses now and then.
When we reached the corner of La Salle and Queensway, we realized that walking down the middle of the street would not be an option taking the busy Queensway toward downtown. The snow on the sidewalk was deep and fluffy and would make for a long exhausting walk. Shawn checked his watch. The bus was due in 10 minutes. That sounded like a much better alternative.
We dug deep for bus fare change and waited at the bus stop.
The bus arrived and on we hopped.
We got halfway up La Salle hill and the bus, of course, got stuck.
The driver tried backing down and taking a run at the hill about 3 times. Then he radioed in and said he would take Queensway instead.
Shawn offered to direct traffic so the driver could back straight out onto the less messy main street. Oh no, I'll just turn around here, said the driver.
So, yeah, you guessed it, he got completely stuck, wedged, even.
We exited the bus and walked back up the hill. By this time, we were pretty determined to make it to Ric's Grill and the size of the planned lunch was growing in our imaginations.
I waited on the front steps while Shawn backed out into the street and got stuck and got out the shovel and got unstuck and then moved the car forward and got stuck again.
The neighbor brought his truck down and towed the Jetta back far enough to give Shawn a run for it. If we could just get it to the end of the block, we would be out of the deep snow!
He made it to the end of the block... and got stuck on the other side of the intersection. The good-natured neighbor towed the car back a few feet and we ran at it and were on our way.
Shawn decided to park under the library where there was no snow. As we walked to Ric's, we stopped at City Hall to get our bus fare back. The lady gave us some bus tickets and enjoyed our story.
At 1:08pm, we arrived at Ric's Grill... starving but feeling like conquerors.
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