The weather has been rather pleasant here for the last week or so and in Fort McMurray, nothing quite says spring like mud and slush. Instead of sliding around corners and stopping over long distances on ice-covered pavements, we have instead the big melt. As the temperature heads towards the balmy heights of plus 2 or 3, the snow starts to rapidly disappear, leaving puddles of water on the road.
Just before Caroline left, she washed her car. I was somewhat bemused by the fact that she was attempting to steer around the puddles as it’s a pointless exercise. Even if you manage to avoid driving through them, every other bugger on the road is more than happy to fly through them next to you and douse your car. That, or when you’ve left sufficient distance for the spray from the vehicle in front to settle before its all over your windscreen, someone cuts in front to defeat your prudence.
And even though it seems like you might be driving through a puddle of water and that it can’t be too bad, each puddle is actually a little dirt and filth impregnated liquid trap designed to turn your car a filthy hue no matter what colour its origins.
Our first winter here, I found myself stepping on the puddles as they froze, wondering just how frozen they were. I soon realized as they became solid ice that this wasn’t the safest practice and stopped. Well in spring you have the opposite problem. You step on something thinking that its ice and snow only to find that it’s a thin crust over a frigid, hole-in-your-shoe-seeking puddle. Its certainly too early for the holy sneakers just yet (unless one steps with caution).
This last weekend, the sun was out and shining and the day nice and warm, so I pulled on a pair of shorts to go to coach indoor soccer.
Yes, you know you’ve acclimatized when you pull on a pair of shorts to enjoy the sun … when it’s 2 degrees outside!
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