I’m sure everyone in Toronto had a difficult time last night, but this is my blog, therefore I have the right to bitch on it.
Yesterday, I left work at 4:30 in an effort to pick Austin up from the babysitter’s by 6. On a normal day, it takes a little over 30 minutes to drive the 14 kilometres from Yonge and St. Clair, where I work, to the babysitter’s house – which by the way is only about a kilometre or so from my house. I figured with all the snow, an hour and a half should give me enough time to get there.
No.
I rolled up at home at 7:50 p.m., meaning it took me 3 hours and 20 minutes to drive 14 kilometres. I think if you do the math, my spedometre actually read in negative numbers! (Now the reason I went straight home at a point, was that Ryan and I kept calling to check on each other’s progress, and at about 7:20 p.m., Ryan was closest, so he went and got Austin.)
Anyone who drove yesterday knows what the streets were like. They were covered in snow and visibility was next to none at times. But the real problem was that no one was actually able to drive anywhere. Cars were bumper-to-bumper for miles and miles; lights would change from red to green to red to green and back to red and I still wouldn’t be able to manage to move my car more than a centimetre or two. At times, my right leg got so tired I just put the car in park.
The frustrating part is there really wasn’t THAT much snow. I think there were 10, maybe 15, centimetres of snow. I’m relatively sure that no one bats an eye in cities where 10 centimetres of snow is just considered an afternoon flurry. Correct me if I’m wrong, but cities like Winnipeg, Montreal and Buffalo manage just fine – at least until you get to the point of 50 or 80 centimetres of snow at one time.
But for some reason, us Torontonians are just aren’t able to manage snow. It snows every year, and every year the majority of folks suddenly don’t remember how to drive. And I don’t mean that they drive too slowly and cautiously, instead, gridlock ensues because people drive like idiots. They block intersections in order to make the light, they sideswipe cars in order to get just a little farther ahead…and they cause accidents.
And those accidents cause gridlock. And that gridlock kept me from picking up my son.
But I’ve made a decision; I’m not going through that again. Next time it snows I'm finding somewhere to hang out near work, or heading home at 2 in the afternoon.
4 comments:
I'm glad that you all got home safely, Deb. I think that leaving at 2:00 is the best bet. It took me 35 minutes to do a 15-minute drive yesterday, but that was at 1:30 in the afternoon.
I have to add some thought to your bitch:
1.It should be illegal to attempt to ride a bike in such weather. I don't care that you're risking your life, you're getting in everyone's way.
2. Why do they insist on waiting until the snow stops to begin plowing the streets? Could it be that much more expensive to slap a plow on the front of that salt truck?
3. It should be completly legal to ram anyone who blocks an intersection on a red light. I got stuck on Adelaide for like 20 minutes simply because idits going south on Jarvis kept blocking all the lanes when the light turned red. Grrrrr.
I wholeheartedly agree Rob, I actually deleted comments like that from this post the first time I wrote it. Especially the one about idiots who block the intersection. Gee buddy, do you think you're that much closer to home now that you've stopped everyone from moving in any direction.
I like how you wrote about how great snow is on your blog but saved the bitching about it for mine! :)
If it makes you feel any better, we had our first official snow day here in Huntsville yesterday. I was shocked, since snow doesn't seem to stop anyone or anything up here. But, like you mentioned we probably got double what you got!
Gotta say, I don't miss the Big city so much any more :)
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