Snowmaggedon

Having lived in Vancouver for 27 years, and Kingston for the past 2 years, I have come to learn many things. One of them is that I don't like snow. Sure it looks pretty and you can do neat stuff in it like ski and toboggan, but let's face it. Snow is a real bummer.

Now, the snow and winter weather in Kingston is much worse than the snow in Vancouver as everyone knows. Before I left to come back to Vancouver, we had this massive storm, named by everyone including Environment Canada "Snowmageddon". Now this sounded ridiculous, but truth be told, it was a pretty bad storm. We had to drive home from work through it on Friday, and it was harry at times. Then I was nervous because flights were cancelled left, right, and centre and I new I only had a day "window" of good weather to get out. Turns out Vancouver was getting weather about the same. Here is what has happened as a result of Snowmageddon.

#1) Flight out of Kingston was delayed 2 hours. Now, because Pearson International had cancelled 300 flights out of Toronto the previous day, the flights were all screwed up the next day too. I specifically left myself a 3 hour window between connecting flights so that this would not be a problem. Super glad I did.

#2) I get to Pearson and I am starving, both because I am a fat guy, but mostly mostly because I hadn't had anything to eat yet that day and it was pushing 1:30. So I go to Tim Horton's, only to find out that they are pretty much sold out of everything. I manage to get a ham and Swiss sandwich (my 4th choice) and a bowl of vegetable soup (my third choice). I get it and go to my gate, only to find that my next flight has been delayed, but only a few minutes.

#3) I get to my seat on the plane, and realize that my luck has been pretty good so far, only to see my luck go downhill fast. The guy beside me, is about 300ish pounds and has fingers like cabbage rolls (which becomes important to the story immanently). I manage to sit down beside him and before I even get settle he starts yammering on about who-knows what. It is then that I realize that he is not wearing deodorant, and he smells very fragrant. He also has a sweat rag, which he uses to mop his brow and forearms (yes, that's right, his forearms had rivulets of sweat on them in December. Now, I know that some people have that hyperhalidrosys or whatever it is called where you sweat so much, but this guy was just a fat dude who was gross. This is where it gets interesting. He is busy using his Blackberry, texting someone when he says: "I wish those damn Asians would make these things with keypads big enough for normal people to use."

Two things make this funny: First of all, the Blackberry was made by a Canadian company, not the Japanese, Chinese, or Koreans. Second of all, being half Asian myself, and not 95 pounds with fingers the size of chopsticks, I found his racist comment inappropriate. I puffed out my chest, and told him in my most calm-but-intimidating voice: "Huh, I am half Asian." Needless to say, the conversation ended with that.

#4) I land in Vancouver, only to wake the next morning in a Winter Wonderland, which allows me to shovel for the next 3-4 hours. It took so long because not only was there he front and back, but the neighbours' fronts as well, and the greenhouse roof, and the deck. Oh yeah, shovelling was interrupted for a few hours by me braving the malls to finish my Christmas shopping, and to drain a ton of water out of the greenhouse when a pipe exploded.

#5) I spent last night at Donna's after picking her up from work, then came home to take my Mom shopping. That trip was fine, but upon returning home again, 2 more pond pipes had exploded and were leaking water all over the garage and alley. It took us 2 hours, a phone call to some specialists, and a ton of help from our awesome neighbour Tony, to get it fixed, and it really is just a jury-rigged system, but it looks good so far.

All I can say is, if global warming is responsible, we need to get our asses in gear fast to get things fixed.