I hope you all had a great Christmas.
On Friday, work let out early (after our annual Secret Santa - and annual post-secret santa laughing at people who signed their gifts - wine tasting, and potluck lunch), and the girl and I gathered up presents and warm socks to brave the trek into the frozen north to visit my folks.
The trip up was a disaster of Griswold proportions. First, apparantly no other driver in southern ontrario feels the need to clear off the roof of their car, so we were dodging chunks of flying ice until Toronto. Well, we tried to dodge, anyways. A football-sized chunk of ice smashed into my windshield (and given that it had to hit it at at least 100kph, I have no idea how it didn't smash through the windshield). It's really frustrating to think that some very serious damage could have been caused to my car or to the girl and I, and we never would have been able to catch the dickhead who couldn't be bothered to spend the five minutes to clean the potential projectiles from the roof of his (or her) grey van.
So a holiday "fuck you" to asshats the world over.
Then we hit a slight snag in Burlington, where the northbound QEW splits off. You can either take the "QEW Toronto" or the "403 Hamilton". We needed to get on the 403, but to me, if an exit sign reads "403 Hamilton", that says that the exit will take you onto the 403 towards Hamilton. That is the wrong direction for our purposes, so I assumed that if we kept going to Toronto, we would have another exit going eastbound onto the 403 and all would be serene.
But no.
What the sign "403 Hamilton" actually means is that "This exit will get you onto the 403, and one of the two directions this highway takes will get you to Hamilton. Oh, it goes the other way, but we don't feel the need to mention that here."
So a holiday "fuck you" to people who post incomplete road signs!
What this meant was that we continued on the QEW and instead of taking the 403 to the 407 and passing completely around Toronto, we stayed on the QEW which was kind enough to take us directly into Toronto.
By this point, it was around the dinner rush hour on the Friday of a holiday weekend in Toronto. So traffic was bad enough, but the highway turned into a parking lot thanks to the three-car pileup that was clogging one of the lanes. (Oh, and the fact that Toronto drivers would typically rather stab your entire family in the eyes with scorpion tails than actually let somebody into their lane.)
So, a holiday "fuck you" to rotten drivers.
Finally, we got onto the 421, which brought us to the 407, and ultimately onto the 400 out of Toronto. Things went smoothly through Barrie, but then things started getting rough.
(I should mention that three days before this trip, the grass was still green in my corner of Ontario, and there was scarcely any staying snow. I dared to hope that the drive would be pleasant and devoid of any nasty weather. Of course, two days before the trip, the entire province got dumped on, and I've gotten only too used to the uncomfortable rumblings of my anti-lock brakes as I lose traction approaching intersections at even the most modest of speeds.)
First, we were travelling in the wake of the sanders, so every passing vehicle managed to darken my windshield a bit further. My windshield wipers were of no use - the washer fluid jet in front of me wasn't working, and the blades themselves either suck or had ice on them or are worn out, because they only managed to move the filth around, making it even more difficult to see.
The inclemency (is that a word?) of the holiday weather only got more and more fun as we headed north, and within an hour of Barrie, we were slowed to an absolute crawl in blinding snowsqualls. We were lucky to have ten feet of visibility at some points, and it was only the general impression of lights on the cars ahead or behind us that gave us any sense of heading in the right direction. I estimated that my highway mistake in Toronto already cost us at least an hour, and so as we inched along the snow-covered pavement, I began to wonder if we'd make it that night at all. There was a small benefit, in that the huge amount of snow hitting and melting on the windshield actually helped clean some of the sand off, so I could at least clearly see that I couldn't see.
So, a holiday "fuck you" to Mother Nature.
We crept through the darkness (my Toronto mistake also costing us the last of the daylight), occasionally getting up to speeds as high as 40 or even 50 kph!
It was at this point that I realized that I really had to pee.
The trip north is usually around 5 to 6 hours, depending on traffic. Easily enough for me to use the little boys' room before we hit the road, and not need to think of anything but driving until we hit the destination. I'm also the type of driver who doesn't like to stop. I don't like travelling (although I do love driving), and I just want the trip to be over as fast as possible. So I never stop. But given that the trip was already hours longer than we anticipated and we were scarcely at the halfway point, there was no option but to set some Mountain Dew free.
We pulled off the road at a Wendy's/Tim Horton's, the girl and I both used the facilities, and I called home to let them know we'd had some navigational and weather hangups, but that hopefully the worst was behind us and we'd be home in just a few more hours, before the clock struck midnight. We didn't want to keep Santa waiting, after all. We passed on coffee and donuts, and headed back out into the now much lighter snowfall, preparing for the final leg of the trip.
I got in the car and turned on the ignition, wanting to keep the heater running for the girl while I went around to the trunk, got the brush, and cleaned off the car. I got out, with the girl standing next to the car, wondering why she wouldn't just get in, closed the door, and headed towards the back.
"Get in," I said.
"I can't," she replied. "You just locked it."
"I did not," I retorted. I couldn't have. I don't even know where the button for the locks is in my car. I use the remote opener on the key fob for everything, and I certainly didn't hit that. But somehow, my car decided to lock up. (I'm not trying to hide from any blame here. I swear I can't think of any possibly situation in which I could have locked the door. The buttons are even recessed so you can't hit them accidentally.)
And so there we were, in the very cold night, with most of our warm gear (who wears a scarf, hat, and mitts inside a car with the heater going?) locked inside my running car.
I could have cried. I was so angry that I seriously thought about smashing a window and taping it over to make the rest of the trip. If you know how much I love my car, you can imagine how frustrated I'd have to be to consider harming it.
I cleared the snow off the windshield, trying to find the sticker that had the phone number for the Mazda road service (new Mazda owners get a thing through them with the CAA, who made a lifelong customer out of me this weekend). Thanking God that I'd thought to charge my cell phone (even though we were standing just feet from a payphone, so it's not like I would have been stranded), I called up and told them of the situation.
"Is the car running?" the operator asked.
"Yes," I admitted, despondent and more than a little embarassed.
"Okay, we'll put you on our priority list. Somebody will be out to you in about an hour and a half."
An hour and a fucking half? There went Christmas Eve.
I went back into the restaurant, and felt furious and stupid and angry at all the shitty luck and upset that I was upset because I didn't want to be pissed off in front of the girlfriend. (You wouldn't like me when I'm angry. I seethe in silence and am not very good company.)
I even ran out as the first tow truck pulled in, thrilled that one had arrived so quickly, only to see it turn around immediately and leave. We weren't the droids they were looking for, evidently.
Fortunately, a second truck - and we were the droids they were looking for - pulled in within a half hour of my call, and I never thought I'd be so happy to watch somebody break into my car. I also know now just how easy it is to break into a car, which is somewhat chilling, but I guess the fact that it was running and all he had to do was wedge a tool into the door to hit the switch to roll down a window made the affair much, much easier.
We thanked the very nice young couple who were operating the truck as profusely as we could, and I vowed to never again think of keeping my girlfriend warm while I did anything with the car (
) as we hit the road for the last leg of our trip.
By this time, the snow had picked up again, and we had another stretch of squalls to battle. We made it through, and the only final obstacle was that the streets of my hometown have apparantly been repaved with glare ice from end to end. I had decided not to invest in winter tires for the car for three main reasons. Firstly, I wouldn't be doing that much driving in nasty winter conditions (winters in the south are nowhere near as trecherous as they are in the north). Secondly, I wanted to see how good my still-relatively-new all-seasons that came with the car would behave. Finally, six hundred bucks for new tires is a lot of money. (I hate it when it comes down to money. I can afford it, but I'd rather not have to.) It turns out that even at only 20-30kph, all-seasons behave like ice-skates when you're coming down any grade of hill. And my hometown is full of hills.
But even though I did a touch more sliding than I wanted, we got home before midnight (the five hour drive had turned into nearly a nine hour drive, all told), the folks and the dogs were thrilled to see us, the folks liked the girl, the girl liked the folks (and loved the dogs), and I got spoiled.
The details of the spoiling will probably make up my next entry, but this has been way too much typing (and I'm sure it's entirely too much reading) so I'll end it here, hoping your holiday travels were safe, less exciting than mine, restful, and joyous.
On Friday, work let out early (after our annual Secret Santa - and annual post-secret santa laughing at people who signed their gifts - wine tasting, and potluck lunch), and the girl and I gathered up presents and warm socks to brave the trek into the frozen north to visit my folks.
The trip up was a disaster of Griswold proportions. First, apparantly no other driver in southern ontrario feels the need to clear off the roof of their car, so we were dodging chunks of flying ice until Toronto. Well, we tried to dodge, anyways. A football-sized chunk of ice smashed into my windshield (and given that it had to hit it at at least 100kph, I have no idea how it didn't smash through the windshield). It's really frustrating to think that some very serious damage could have been caused to my car or to the girl and I, and we never would have been able to catch the dickhead who couldn't be bothered to spend the five minutes to clean the potential projectiles from the roof of his (or her) grey van.
So a holiday "fuck you" to asshats the world over.
Then we hit a slight snag in Burlington, where the northbound QEW splits off. You can either take the "QEW Toronto" or the "403 Hamilton". We needed to get on the 403, but to me, if an exit sign reads "403 Hamilton", that says that the exit will take you onto the 403 towards Hamilton. That is the wrong direction for our purposes, so I assumed that if we kept going to Toronto, we would have another exit going eastbound onto the 403 and all would be serene.
But no.
What the sign "403 Hamilton" actually means is that "This exit will get you onto the 403, and one of the two directions this highway takes will get you to Hamilton. Oh, it goes the other way, but we don't feel the need to mention that here."
So a holiday "fuck you" to people who post incomplete road signs!
What this meant was that we continued on the QEW and instead of taking the 403 to the 407 and passing completely around Toronto, we stayed on the QEW which was kind enough to take us directly into Toronto.
By this point, it was around the dinner rush hour on the Friday of a holiday weekend in Toronto. So traffic was bad enough, but the highway turned into a parking lot thanks to the three-car pileup that was clogging one of the lanes. (Oh, and the fact that Toronto drivers would typically rather stab your entire family in the eyes with scorpion tails than actually let somebody into their lane.)
So, a holiday "fuck you" to rotten drivers.
Finally, we got onto the 421, which brought us to the 407, and ultimately onto the 400 out of Toronto. Things went smoothly through Barrie, but then things started getting rough.
(I should mention that three days before this trip, the grass was still green in my corner of Ontario, and there was scarcely any staying snow. I dared to hope that the drive would be pleasant and devoid of any nasty weather. Of course, two days before the trip, the entire province got dumped on, and I've gotten only too used to the uncomfortable rumblings of my anti-lock brakes as I lose traction approaching intersections at even the most modest of speeds.)
First, we were travelling in the wake of the sanders, so every passing vehicle managed to darken my windshield a bit further. My windshield wipers were of no use - the washer fluid jet in front of me wasn't working, and the blades themselves either suck or had ice on them or are worn out, because they only managed to move the filth around, making it even more difficult to see.
The inclemency (is that a word?) of the holiday weather only got more and more fun as we headed north, and within an hour of Barrie, we were slowed to an absolute crawl in blinding snowsqualls. We were lucky to have ten feet of visibility at some points, and it was only the general impression of lights on the cars ahead or behind us that gave us any sense of heading in the right direction. I estimated that my highway mistake in Toronto already cost us at least an hour, and so as we inched along the snow-covered pavement, I began to wonder if we'd make it that night at all. There was a small benefit, in that the huge amount of snow hitting and melting on the windshield actually helped clean some of the sand off, so I could at least clearly see that I couldn't see.
So, a holiday "fuck you" to Mother Nature.
We crept through the darkness (my Toronto mistake also costing us the last of the daylight), occasionally getting up to speeds as high as 40 or even 50 kph!
It was at this point that I realized that I really had to pee.
The trip north is usually around 5 to 6 hours, depending on traffic. Easily enough for me to use the little boys' room before we hit the road, and not need to think of anything but driving until we hit the destination. I'm also the type of driver who doesn't like to stop. I don't like travelling (although I do love driving), and I just want the trip to be over as fast as possible. So I never stop. But given that the trip was already hours longer than we anticipated and we were scarcely at the halfway point, there was no option but to set some Mountain Dew free.
We pulled off the road at a Wendy's/Tim Horton's, the girl and I both used the facilities, and I called home to let them know we'd had some navigational and weather hangups, but that hopefully the worst was behind us and we'd be home in just a few more hours, before the clock struck midnight. We didn't want to keep Santa waiting, after all. We passed on coffee and donuts, and headed back out into the now much lighter snowfall, preparing for the final leg of the trip.
I got in the car and turned on the ignition, wanting to keep the heater running for the girl while I went around to the trunk, got the brush, and cleaned off the car. I got out, with the girl standing next to the car, wondering why she wouldn't just get in, closed the door, and headed towards the back.
"Get in," I said.
"I can't," she replied. "You just locked it."
"I did not," I retorted. I couldn't have. I don't even know where the button for the locks is in my car. I use the remote opener on the key fob for everything, and I certainly didn't hit that. But somehow, my car decided to lock up. (I'm not trying to hide from any blame here. I swear I can't think of any possibly situation in which I could have locked the door. The buttons are even recessed so you can't hit them accidentally.)
And so there we were, in the very cold night, with most of our warm gear (who wears a scarf, hat, and mitts inside a car with the heater going?) locked inside my running car.
I could have cried. I was so angry that I seriously thought about smashing a window and taping it over to make the rest of the trip. If you know how much I love my car, you can imagine how frustrated I'd have to be to consider harming it.
I cleared the snow off the windshield, trying to find the sticker that had the phone number for the Mazda road service (new Mazda owners get a thing through them with the CAA, who made a lifelong customer out of me this weekend). Thanking God that I'd thought to charge my cell phone (even though we were standing just feet from a payphone, so it's not like I would have been stranded), I called up and told them of the situation.
"Is the car running?" the operator asked.
"Yes," I admitted, despondent and more than a little embarassed.
"Okay, we'll put you on our priority list. Somebody will be out to you in about an hour and a half."
An hour and a fucking half? There went Christmas Eve.
I went back into the restaurant, and felt furious and stupid and angry at all the shitty luck and upset that I was upset because I didn't want to be pissed off in front of the girlfriend. (You wouldn't like me when I'm angry. I seethe in silence and am not very good company.)
I even ran out as the first tow truck pulled in, thrilled that one had arrived so quickly, only to see it turn around immediately and leave. We weren't the droids they were looking for, evidently.
Fortunately, a second truck - and we were the droids they were looking for - pulled in within a half hour of my call, and I never thought I'd be so happy to watch somebody break into my car. I also know now just how easy it is to break into a car, which is somewhat chilling, but I guess the fact that it was running and all he had to do was wedge a tool into the door to hit the switch to roll down a window made the affair much, much easier.
We thanked the very nice young couple who were operating the truck as profusely as we could, and I vowed to never again think of keeping my girlfriend warm while I did anything with the car (
) as we hit the road for the last leg of our trip.
By this time, the snow had picked up again, and we had another stretch of squalls to battle. We made it through, and the only final obstacle was that the streets of my hometown have apparantly been repaved with glare ice from end to end. I had decided not to invest in winter tires for the car for three main reasons. Firstly, I wouldn't be doing that much driving in nasty winter conditions (winters in the south are nowhere near as trecherous as they are in the north). Secondly, I wanted to see how good my still-relatively-new all-seasons that came with the car would behave. Finally, six hundred bucks for new tires is a lot of money. (I hate it when it comes down to money. I can afford it, but I'd rather not have to.) It turns out that even at only 20-30kph, all-seasons behave like ice-skates when you're coming down any grade of hill. And my hometown is full of hills.
But even though I did a touch more sliding than I wanted, we got home before midnight (the five hour drive had turned into nearly a nine hour drive, all told), the folks and the dogs were thrilled to see us, the folks liked the girl, the girl liked the folks (and loved the dogs), and I got spoiled.
The details of the spoiling will probably make up my next entry, but this has been way too much typing (and I'm sure it's entirely too much reading) so I'll end it here, hoping your holiday travels were safe, less exciting than mine, restful, and joyous.
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Saturday night may work for something--but what?!