Snow
We had another two inches of snow this morning. Billed, yet again, as a massive storm. It was a snow fall.
Soft goofy flakes most of which died when they hit the ground.
Toronto is a city of new SUVs, jeeps, and suburban
off-road vehicles, all doodling around the city streets, instead of
being useable a hundred miles or more further north.
Driven it seems by drivers who just don't have a clue.
The city screams with tires spinning under full
throttle, vehicles suddenly getting a grip and launching themselves into
a lane of traffic, lanes of traffic slamming on brakes and sliding
towards a gazelle-like hazard.
Which used to puzzle me. Because I've had no
problems driving a snow here for thirty years. Me, from the arid desert
of Western Australia. Ten inches of rain a year, if you're luck, in
Southern Cross.
What's up?
The answer lies in the difference in the two environments.
In Toronto we get a snowfall perhaps five times
each winter. Folks get five opportunities to use driving techniques in
slippery conditions.
In the desert, the wind blows dust hither and yon,
the dust settles on the impervious clay. Then we get a millimeter of
rain, nothing at all, really, but the roads are transformed into skating
rinks, and the bulk of the rods in The Yilgarn and earth-roads.
As a consequence the bulk of my early driving
years, age sixteen through twenty-one, were spent with frequent
real-life tests on skating-rinks.
And when it wasn't raining, we had thick dust on the roads, drifts, if you will, nit unlike snow-drifts in Toronto.
Except we had them 365 days a year!
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