Western Canada - hell, pretty much all of northern North America - has received a ton of snow over the last several days. The situation in the eastern part of the continent seems particularly dire with major disruptions to air travel in Toronto and even deaths in Buffalo, New York. The amount of snow that has fallen since the cold snap we endured prior to Christmas has been incredible. Low pressure systems keep coming in from the Pacific and they are absolutely filled with moisture. Even Vancouver, B.C. - not especially know for harsh winters and tons of snow - has been severely disrupted.
Now, being from the Canadian prairies, I consider myself quite immune to this type of weather. Whether it be tons of snow or severely cold temperatures, through my nearly 50 years in this harsh environment, I'd like to think that I've seen it all. Out here in Saskatchewan we're not like those wimps in Vancouver and down east! We don't need to shut down our cities and our economies just because a dump of snow came down.
Well, my smugness was given a beating yesterday afternoon when I got stuck in my all wheel drive SUV in a snowbank near downtown Regina! What a humbling experience this was.
I decided to take the family for a game of badminton to the Fieldhouse on Elphinstone Street. As we proceeded past downtown, I noticed that a particularly long freight train was progressing west and would block my left-hand turn on to Elphinstone Street. Being the impatient and smart guy that I am, I decided to duck under the tracks via the Albert Street subway and then proceed to the Fieldhouse through some residential side streets. This was a no brainer of a strategy.
Well, my luck ran out as I progressed past the old Taylor Field site off of Retallack Street and North Railway Street. A path had seemingly been plowed off of Retallack onto the area where one of the Taylor Field parking lots used to be. I got about twenty feet in and the SUV started sinking and I could just feel the impending hang up occurring. Without a doubt, we came to a stop as the bottom of the SUV became hung up on the snow drift and all four wheels were spinning. We could not proceed forward or backward. "Son of a bitch!" was my desperate response.
While my wife (never a person to give up on accomplishing anything) attempted to move snow from around the wheels, a good Samaritan from Eastern Europe stopped and offered to help pull us out with his truck and tow rope. Unfortunately, we could not find a good spot on my SUV to hook the tow rope to. I was reluctant to hook it on just anywhere for fear of damaging the suspension or undercarriage. Ugh... I decided to call a tow truck and get my SUV pulled out of the snow with no damage. Luckily, there were plenty of tow trucks available and we had to wait only around 45 mins for one to arrive.
Upon arrival the driver jokingly asked me if I was "trying to impress the wife?!". I said no and that I was overconfident in my abilities and simply got hung up on a deep snow drift. In about 15 mins, he had winched us out of the snowbank. What a relief. My embarrassment was over...
So much for that family game of badminton though. We're going to try again another time. I won't be taking any smart short cuts though to try and avoid delays at train tracks...
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