078 PERFECT CHRISTMAS

Here we are, it’s Christmas Day of 2016.  It has been an amazing journey these last nine months or so.  Going from my tiny 600 square foot basement suite to this beautiful new townhouse.  From cooking on a 2-burner hot plate and an electric wok, to using this huge 5 burner gas stove and a gas convection oven.  I am thankful every day for the change.

As I have documented in the past months I have made good use of that stove as well.  Mastering new baking skills and learning to cook and bake new things.  I still managed to cook some good dinners in my old place, but it’s so much easier now.  I did a turkey dinner for 8 on Thanksgiving and will be doing another tomorrow on Boxing Day.

FILLING THE TARTS
TEACAKES IN OVEN

Renee will be leaving shortly to go home where she and her friend Carol will walk the seawall in Stanley Park as they do every Christmas.  Toby and I will spend the day here doing our usual routine and will join them later for dinner at Carol’s.  My task each year is to bring the desert, which is usually me bringing a pumpkin pie and spray whip cream from the store.

ADDING STARS

Not this year though.  Last night I baked 24 mince tarts, which as I am told are Carol’s favourites.  I also baked 31 Russian Tea Cakes.  Only a portion of those will go to Carol’s place while the rest will be shared with my kids at dinner tomorrow.  Renee can hardly wait and I must keep them hidden until she heads off.

We have some great new neighbours and have even exchanged cards with a few that we have become closer to.  I had one great neighbour at the old place, Yoko, but here everyone is so friendly.  I think it has something to do with the fact that we are all in similar situations, moving into new places in a new location.  Some are new to the area like the girls behind us who came from Montreal.  Others have lived in Maple Ridge for years and are downsizing.

I have decorated the house with lights outside and a Christmas Tree inside.  Next year I will add to it by doing some inside decorations and maybe add to the outside display.  But what could possibly make this any better?  Well it is something that very rarely happened in Vancouver.  That is a White Christmas.  Maple Ridge tends to get more snow than Vancouver, although this year when we have had the few big snowfalls, the accumulations in Vancouver were greater.

From what I understand, a lot of the snow in Vancouver has melted with the rain over the past week.  It was raining here too and the snow we had was quickly disappearing.  I joked that if there was still a little bit left, could we call it an Off-White Christmas?  We shall see what happens.

Friday morning, the dawn of a special day.  Ten years ago, we drove all the way to Yakima, Washington and got Toby.  We were both sick, which made for a miserable drive.  But, 5 hours isn’t bad.  Except we got jammed up in Snoqualmie Pass with avalanche control and the 5-hour drive turned into 9.  It all worked out and we got home the same night at 11:30 PM.  This day would also have marked my Mom’s 99^th Birthday.

KID AND A SNOWMAN

INFLATABLE

 My Mom loved snow.  Maybe that’s where I get it from.  She was born and raised in the Prairies and you would have thought she would have had enough of the white stuff, but no, whenever it snowed, Mom was like a little kid again.  She loved sitting and knitting and watching the snow fall.  I’m the same way, minus the knitting of course.

SALT TRUCK WORKING

DECORATED

I don’t like to shovel it, but I don’t have to worry about that here.  That is all done for us.  It was a little disappointing when I got up at 5:00 AM and looking out the window to see it was pissing rain.  When I looked out again at 7:00 AM it had switched to glorious snow.  It snowed all day from 7:00 AM to almost 7:00 PM.  Even despite that, we didn’t get a lot of buildup.  Two inches would be a very generous estimate.

However, on Saturday, the temperature dropped and everything froze solid.  It was treacherous walking Toby yesterday morning.  He was sliding on the ice, Renee was sliding and I was doing my very best to avoid it.  I wore my runners and did sort of modified penguin walk, but we got through it.

WHITE CHRISTMAS

So here we are on Christmas morning and waiting for the one thing that will make Christmas perfect.  Not knowing what happened with the weather overnight, but hoping for the best.  I peeked through the blinds and sure enough, the snow is still here.  We have a White Christmas.  A great welcome to the new house and our first Christmas here.  My first White Christmas in many years. Hmm, I wonder if my Mom had something to do with it?

077 SNOW DAY, YAY

Finally, after waiting all week, we got some snow.  It was supposed to happen Thursday morning, then Thursday afternoon, then late Thursday night, but it finally started at 7:00 AM on Friday.  It started very gently, with a powdery snow and kept it up until 9:00 when Toby and I went out for our morning walk.  It stopped then.

There was maybe ½ to ¾ inch of snow.  Walking our driveway was fine because at 7:30 AM one of the guys from the construction crew grabbed one of the bobcats and shoveled all the roads.  It worked well and even picked up the ice left from our -10-degree day yesterday.

STARTING THE LIGHTS

FINISH LIGHTS. A LOOK INSIDE
THE INDIANA JONES GARAGE

For salting, it was hilarious.  I looked out the window and saw the same guy sitting on the tailgate of a pickup truck.  They came slowly up the road and the guy in back had a big bag of salt and a tin can.  He would dip it into the bag of salt and sprinkle it onto the road behind the truck.  By the time, I got to my camera, they had disappeared around the corner.  Hey, it may have been improvised, but it worked well.  It was just funny to watch.

The pathway was fine for walking as well, since it’s gravel.  The place I had problems was on the city sidewalks.  The roads themselves were plowed and well salted.  Sidewalks not so much.  The top part of the 240^th hill had a path salted into it but the rest, not so much.  It was also hard walking in my new boots which I haven’t fully broken in yet.

Mr. Enthusiasm, Toby started yanking me along and I started to lose my balance, but managed to stop from falling by grabbing one of the fences around the boulevard trees.  It would have been fine, but Toby kept pulling and I felt something in my wrist, creak.  Man, did that hurt.  Once I got home, I iced it and took an anti-inflammatory and it seems to be a lot better this evening.

It started snowing again around noon, only a lot harder this time.  It’s a lot warmer today at only 0 degrees.  The hose really holds the heat well and normally stays around 19 or 20 without the heat being on.  Yesterday the inside temperature got down to 14C and I was finally forced to turn on the heat for the first time.  I was wondering how well the electric baseboard heaters would do, but they had the heat up to 20 within an hour.

BEFORE INSTALLATION OF EXTRA
LIGHTS, WINDOW LIGHTS
AND SNOW

At 3:30 PM, Toby and I headed out for our evening walk in the winter wonderland and directly after headed to the Westcoast Express to pick up Renee.  The train was 25 minutes late today.  Driving was easy using 4-wheel drive, with all-terrain tires and just driving slowly and carefully.  We saw both extremes on the road.  The road itself was clear of snow, but there was some idiot driving at between 10 and 15 kph.  It’s good to go slow, but there is a limit.

On the other hand, after we got parked and were heading inside, some moron went by at between 80 and 90 kph and throwing snow everywhere.  I’d be amazed if he makes it home at all and without killing someone.  You just have to shake your head and wonder.

After dinner, I finally got around to putting lights up around the front window.  That finishes off the front decorating.  I put these lights inside the window though.  I still must do the back window, but I’ll do that tomorrow.  They look good from the outside, but I should have turned off the house lights as they don’t show up too well in the photo.  The snow just completes the whole picture.

FRONT OF HOUSE WITH WINDOW LIGHTS
EXTRA LIGHTS AND SNOW

I’ll re-shoot the photo tomorrow with the house lights off, so that they will show up better.  Hopefully the snow will still be here in time for the photo.  One can never tell around here.  What is heavy snow one minute can be heavy rain in the next minute.  We shall see, but for now, I’m just happy we finally have snow.  It just makes it feel so much more Christmassy!

076 SNOWMAGGEDON, NOT QUITE

I admit it, I love snow.  When it snows, I am transported back to those days as a kid when I would run outside at the first sign of snow and play in it for hours.  So long in fact that by the time I got home, I could barely move I was so cold.  Back in the day, Vancouver used to get lots of snow but nobody believed me, until we got that huge dump of snow in 1996 that hung around for weeks.

Over the years, Vancouver seems to get less and less snow and when we did get it, there would just be a dusting in the morning that was gone by evening.  Lots of times there would be no snow in Vancouver, but lots out in the valley.  So, when the time came that I had decided to move, my choice of location, was somewhat influenced by the extra snow.

Imagine my excitement when the snow warning was broadcast on Sunday.  I spent the evening right up until bedtime, looking out the window and checking for snow.  I can sit for hours at a window watching snow fall.  It is so peaceful and brings back memories.  My Mom was the same way, even though she was born in Saskatoon.  She still loved snow and maybe that’s where I get it from.

So, when I woke up yesterday and heard all the reports of snow in Vancouver and surrounding municipalities, I kept waiting for it to happen here in Maple Ridge.  Instead, the temperature hovered at 2 Celsius all day and it rained from morning to night.  As if we haven’t had enough rain.  Even watching the traffic snarls didn’t dampen my enthusiasm.

Admittedly, I’m retired, so if I drive anywhere, it is usually by choice.  I don’t drive near as much anymore as is evidenced by my truck which was purchased December 29, 2010 only has 32,000 miles on it on December 6, 2016.  That’s not a misprint.  My truck has a button that can switch the readout between standard and metric.  While I can certainly understand kilometers per hour, I have no clue what gas mileage in kilometers per 100 liters mean.  That’s why I use miles on my dashboard.

I have absolutely no problem driving in snow, partly because of all the various driving courses I have had over the years and partly because my truck has 4-wheel drive.  I even anticipated the snow last week and had some very nice BF Goodrich All-Terrain tires installed on my truck.  I opted for those as they will handle anything and are rated for snow.  It also negates the need to store 4 tires and have them changed back and forth.

What I do have a problem with on the roads, is not my driving skills.  It’s all the morons out there who are incapable of driving with any shred of intelligence in the sunshine, let alone in snow.  Driving with summer tires, driving too fast for conditions, getting stuck repeatedly.

I can remember one snowfall in Vancouver, there was one woman who managed to get stuck at not only the same intersection but the same spot, every day for eight days straight.  The strange part about it was she was turning to go downhill.  The first day, probably half a dozen neighbours came out to help get her unstuck.  The second day it was reduced.  The third day it was down to two and on the fourth, only one guy came out.  On day five one old guy came out and yelled at her to get herself out.

Shoveling the snow is not an issue, because living in a townhouse means that the management company takes care of any snow removal.  I don’t have any sidewalks to shovel anyway.  But, since we didn’t get any snow, there was no test of the efficiency of the snow removal work in the complex.

So, the reports yesterday of 8 cm of snow in Vancouver and up to 15 cm in Surrey was very disappointing as I sit looking out on bare streets and rain.  I got up this morning hoping things had changed overnight.  It has at least stopped raining but the temperature has dropped well below freezing and I can see glistening of ice on the road.

We shall see what the rest of the week holds as the weather reports are all calling for sub-zero temperatures for the next week or so and another snowfall warning is in effect for Thursday.  That means Wednesday will be clear and I can make my usual long trek to UBC to play hockey.

075 A BAD CASE OF GAS

Yesterday I took advantage of the momentary lull in the 90-day rain event and managed to get Toby out for his morning walk in the sunshine for a change.  No, it didn’t last, but we go every morning rain or shine and maybe even snow next week.  We also do another walk in the late afternoon.  It’s good for him and good for me too as it helps me to get my 10,000 steps per day in.

The walk became a little broken up and mixed up though.  When we got to the top of the trail, all the construction fences had fallen over blocking our way.  So, we turned around and went all the way back.  While we were heading back down, we could hear a rushing sound.  It sounded like our little creek had turned into a rushing river, or it was the sound of escaping gas.

Suddenly, the air horns started blasting and I saw the construction safety officer yelling for the workers to get off-site.  They were all complying too.  Dropping their tools and heading out in an orderly fashion.  That’s when I smelled it.  Natural gas, which has a very distinct odor like rotten eggs.

We continued our walk and headed for the upper trail, which is well away from the townhouse complex.  Unfortunately, the wind was blowing in our direction and the smell of gas on the trail was almost overwhelming.  We completed the trail and headed through the neighbourhood and now that we were out of the wind the smell of gas disappeared.

When we got back to the upper driveway of the construction zone we found it full of fire trucks, police cars and Fortis BC trucks.  There were construction workers, civilians, policemen, firemen and gas workers milling about and figuring out the plan of attack.

I got talking to the construction safety person and discovered that someone using one of the big machines was digging out an area near our soon to be finished club house, when the shovel pierced a significantly large gas main.  This had the potential to be dangerous.  Everyone on the entire site had been evacuated.

So, I was still quite a distance from home and a distance from my truck which is parked on the street.  One of the fire guys, seeing Toby and me both shivering, offered to escort us to the truck to get out of the cold wind.  I was cold because I had been working up a sweat, Toby was cold because he got shaved down again a couple of weeks ago.

So, we headed down the street and got to go right past where the Fortis guys were working hard to seal the leak.  It was an impressive looking line.  Anyway, we made it to the truck and got in, got the heat going and managed to stop shivering.

Not counting the walk, we were only kept out of the house for a little over an hour and then got to go home.  The line had been capped, but the smell of gas lingered for quite a while.  I was nervous about turning on the gas stove, but managed to do it without incident.  That’s funny, because I saw someone on the street, close to the leak, light up a cigarette.  Someone with a shred more intelligence convinced him to put it out.

Just as we got back in the house, the sun had disappeared and the heavens re-opened and it poured rain once again.  It continued all night and again all day today.  Noah only had to put up with 40 days and 40 nights of rain.  On the weather report, they said between September 1 and November 30 we have only had 5 completely dry days.  The rest have had measurable rainfall either at some point in the day, night or the whole day.

They are calling for the possibility of snow on Monday afternoon, but we shall see.  Either way, I’m ready.  I have a 4x4 and just put on a set of Extreme All-Terrain tires, which even carry the snowflake symbol on the side.  I’ve never had trouble driving in the snow, it’s what all the other poor drivers out there do that scares me.  Some are not capable of driving in the sunshine, let alone snow.