Winter in Charlottetown

A touch chilly this morning for the first day back at school. Maisie didn't mind the cold and I didn't mind the official one hour delayed start. Kathleen couldn't wait to get back from the school run to crack on with Toy Story 3!

CBC Radio has been offering helpful wintry advice: like, keep your cat indoors. But since when did dogs take 'bathroom breaks,' long or short? And you know you're on a small island when they give out on the news that one especially frozen school bus wouldn't start this morning so those kids can expect an additional forty-five minute delay!

Following hot on dad's heels, Maisie has finished her own five hundred piece puzzle. These days she starts unprompted with the edge pieces, and has now learned to sort the remainder, in this case into sky, trees, hills and main subject. Her tenacity and more than a little paternal assistance won the day.

Returning to the seasonal theme, there have been ominous creaking noises from the roof as the thousands of pounds of compacted snow and ice up there slowly succumb to gravity. You can't help but duck and hurry under the overhang!

a wintry chill

Sliding back the living room blinds revealed a thick and swirling snowstorm and the radio declared a “snow day” for the island. I peered out of the girls’ bedroom window down into the parking lot and saw, wonder of wonders, it had been ploughed, although a fresh cover was accumulating.

I could set aside taking care of the girls for the morning as Michelle was off work. Firstly I called the Royal Mail in London to query an error on their website which was preventing me from ordering stamps. The agent was able to replicate the error and said it was a big problem that would have to be addressed at a higher level. Their newly revised site won’t recognise any two letter State or Province codes for Canada or the USA. I placed an order for some miniature sheets by phone this time.

I phoned the gym at Stratford and listened to a recorded message confirming the gym was open today so I slipped into running gear and trotted down to the car. Minus ten felt like minus twenty in a strong northerly wind. I pulled the snow brush from the car and hurriedly began sweeping four inches off the roof, bonnet and boot (note the sensible English terms).

The snow crunched under my wheels as I nosed the car round the apartment building, guided by the deep frozen tyre ruts as if on rails. Once on the main road I realized the lack of traffic flow on this “snow day” had left the roads particularly dangerous. I braked gently and early everywhere. Fine snow drift was whipping off roofs. After a thirty minute drive that usually takes twenty I pulled into the Stratford Recreation Centre and slithered the small Kia to a halt between two menacing trucks.

Only a handful of brave souls had made the determined trek to the gym so I had my pick of the equipment. I spent twenty minutes on the elliptical cross trainer, settling into a rhythm and watching my heart rate climb to one hundred and forty-five. Today’s sparse attendance meant scant opportunity for people-watching but soon one newcomer arrived. I saw her study some wall charts then do a few stretches before setting off round the track at a jog. Shock, horror – the wrong way! Walkers use the inside lane and runners the outside but in opposite directions. It’s safer to see a faster person approaching from in front than behind.

The elliptical beeped an announcement that my session had ended and after spraying and wiping the surfaces clean I sauntered towards the track. I stopped at the barrier to stretch and waited for our newcomer to pass. She was a tall, leggy blond with a giraffe-like gait. I caught her eye and motioned to speak to her. She slowed and pointing to the direction instructions I gently suggested that today we were running clockwise. Most apologetically she turned gracefully on her toes and headed off the other way. Naturally this encounter was conducted with all the tact and diplomacy befitting an Englishman.

I dialled in a new album by Delta Spirit on my iPod and set off after the giraffe. Within a few laps I had closed in on her. I ran thirty-one and a half laps which is precisely two and a half miles and passed her three times in the process. My foot was beginning to twinge so I peeled off and sat for a few moments, sweating liberally. I remounted the elliptical and completed another twenty minutes before calling it a day.

An hour and a half of thaw with rising temperatures made the return journey less tricky. I sank gratefully into a hot bath and emerged pink and sparkling to find Michelle dishing up fried eggs on toast for lunch - a much needed energy boost.

snow and ice in Charlottetown

This is our apartment building, under siege from the toughest winter in quite a few years. The weatherman, "Boomer" Gallant tells us over four feet of snow has fallen. It has been cold and the deep snow has compacted under its own weight bringing down roofs. Schools have been closed several times.

Here are some more photographs of Charlottetown in the grip of winter. Some of the ice formations clinging to roofs and eaves are spectacular.

The streets have been ploughed almost daily, sweeping ever higher banks to the roadside, filling people's gardens and driveways. Miniature ploughs scuttle along the sidewalks resulting in walls of frozen snow separating pedestrians from traffic. Intersections have taken on an unfamiliar look with mounds of ploughed snow blocking views. You have to poke your nose out quite far to see if it's safe to pull away. Car tyres grind against chunks of brown ice clinging like granite barnacles to wheel arches.

I took this snap of the corner of my laptop screen just before hurrying down to the bins in my shorts and T-shirt. It took my breath away!

heat wave

Sunrise at 5:30am casts long sharp shadows heralding another day of blistering temperatures. By early afternoon it's twenty nine degrees Celsius with a stifling hot breeze, yet we are cooler than much of the rest of Canada. In central parts the "humidex" (I'm sure we didn't have that when I was small) is forty three degrees Celsius.

This is rather nice for someone like me who enjoys both hot and cold weather. However the heat and humidity sap energy, not useful when you are returning to running after an eight week injury break. There is still an ache in my foot but nothing like the previous severe pain. At the end of yesterday's five mile run I was footsore, heat-exhausted and somewhat dehydrated.

This morning the foot twinged when I first walked but eased up later. The latest setback has been lower back pain so nasty that you would laugh to see me attempt to regain the perpendicular from a sitting or lying position. I believe my gait is compensating for the foot injury and putting unexpected muscle strain on my back.

I have ordered some new running shoes with high tech "motion control" features that support the arches and guide the foot securely from heel to toe. I am keen for them to arrive soon as I have high hopes for them.

time marches on

We turned our clocks forward one hour this weekend. More daylight in the evenings will be nice but it's a reminder that another year is well under way. They say as you get older time seems to pass more quickly and I wouldn't argue with that. The Vernal Equinox is less than a week away, marking the shrinking of our nights and the stretching of our days.

I am matching the pace with projects and hobbies. In the past three months I have ticked off all the niggling "to-do" items in this small space and fiddled with stamp and coin collections. You expect to concentrate on indoor pursuits at this time of year but this winter has so far been the mildest in Atlantic Canada for forty-eight years. There have been days of frigid low temperatures and a couple of decent snowstorms but on balance the outdoors has been quite inviting. I have been able to maintain my running and am already wondering how soon I can wheel out my bike.

Our expanded family has brought broken nights, so interesting new routines have developed. Michelle feeds Kathleen during the night and I get up with Maisie around 6am. Most mornings lately I pack Maisie into the car after breakfast and spend a couple of hours around town visiting such exciting places as the supermarket and the library, the Mall and Walmart!

Despite the lukewarm sun, patches of snow are clinging on and the trees remain a bundle of grey sticks. But time will change that. In a few weeks time buds will appear and soon after the trees will be swaying canopies of lush green and daffodils will make their belated appearance.

For a while longer though, I want to enjoy the crisp cold air, the dazzling blue sky and the deceptive low sun. Today I will be pulling on my new running shoes and heading for a round-trip run to Victoria Park.

the ice storm

The air is so cold it slices your lungs. Moisture can't decide how to condense and precipitate so it adheres to everything like a thin glass veneer. Power lines are strung with the clearest crystal pendants; trees are coated with a glistening, frozen skin. Minus ten in March is a nice reminder of winter's long grip on PEI.

In contrast to the weather, the reception which awaited me on my return was as warm as you can imagine. Settling back in was smooth and easy.

On Sunday we took a walk in the frigid air, pushing the buggy along sidewalks rutted with ice. I fell to earth with a huge bang. Michelle says my feet scooted right off the ground in front of me, cartoon style, as I thumped onto the ice. Now I am nursing a tender bruised back and elbow. Hmph!

sunset

Click for more views of a Cavendish sunset.

weather or not

There are some more here.

Cold and White

There are some more pictures here.

Weather

My American friends want to know if it will rain on their house. No problem there is a street-level Doppler radar in the area! 3D computer graphics produce convincing cross-sections of a state and a theoretical camera view shows us puddles on the sidewalk.

In the UK a weather forecaster points at an amateurish chart. Crude symbols of clouds are slapped on huge areas of England. That seems too general but is probably accurate. We live under permanently grey skies in the UK.

Most of our weather is very bland. We have light breezes, the USA has twisters and hurricanes. The US Weather Channel says it's a warm spring day, for the British that's probably the hottest blazing summer day we'll get. We wear T-shirts and shorts on holiday, the locals wear jeans and jumpers. You could say we stand out!

Fanfares blast when there is a single snowflake recorded south of Scotland. A North American winter can last for six months. Such a large continent is bound to have violent extremes of weather which I imagine you get used to. This tiny island is bathed in the gentlest of elements. Safer of course but dreadfully dull. I wish we had proper weather!