snowcouver?

It's raining in Vancouver. Hallelujah.

In years past, perhaps my number one complaint about living in 'Raincouver' is just that--the rain. Not this year. With the rain comes some sort of semblance to life once again. I walked on pavement today, perhaps for the first time in a month. Add to that joy, this: the buses are on time, the skytrain is back on its normal schedule, and I'm not pushing our car out of another snowdrift. [We'll not mention who exactly put the car in the drift in the first place]. But this oft-repeated predicament on the snow-covered side streets of Surrey raises a fundamental question in my Ontarian mind: why am I stuck in a snowdrift on a street...again? Back in Ontario, this was never a problem. It was a cycle as simple as this: 1) Snow 2) Plow 3) Repeat.

Vancouver, however, is not known for this white, fluffy precipitation. In a city not used to massive amounts of snow, little resources exist to deal with it when it piles up on city streets. Here, the cycle looks a little lacking: 1) Snow 2) Repeat.

As the snow continues to pile up on the streets of the city, nothing but the smooth summery tires of civilian transport exists to crush it into oblivion. Plows are few and far between here, something everyone east of Abbotsford must be aware of. Heck, in Ontario, my siblings and I even had pet names for each type of plow we'd watch pass our home. They were the A&W burgers of the street: there was Papa, with it's crew of double-bladed, highway-clearing Papa friends; Momma took to the main city streets, leaving a trail of salt in her wake; Sister took care of the side roads; and best of all, there was Baby. I remember hearing the constant drone of Baby as she tumbled up the sidewalks of Grimsby, leaving nothing but a clean patch of cement for the foot commuter. Alas, this family of snow-crushing machinery only exists in areas where...well...where there's snow. A lot of snow. The highways of the Lower Mainland are lucky to have Sister scrape over them.

It seems the snow was a short-lived (albeit month-long) adventure. It won't take long to get used to the rain. I heard my first complaint about it at work today: 'When's it ever going to stop?'