an amateur attempt at the blog phenomenon and a way to give people an idea of life in whitehorse, yukon, sarah and jole style...

Wednesday, January 12, 2005

whitehorse top 10...number 10

well, well, well.

The 10th best thing about living in whitehorse was going to be simply, winter. That time of year when it feels cozy to be inside with a good book, to sleep lots, take lots of walks, when everything is quiet outside and the land is shrouded in a blanket of white. Having a real winter season is a real bonus for sarah and i who grew up in vancouver where we experienced rain and more rain from November to April. New recreational opportunities are opened up with the snow and the sub-0 temperatures: cross country skiing, skating outside, dog mushing, snowshoeing... I will say it now, I would much rather take -25 in Whitehorse than a +6 and rainy day in vancouver any day of the week.

So winter was going to be the 10th best thing about this fair city. Unfortunately, after our little experience today, I can't say that old man winter can make the top 10 list. Upon waking this morning we discovered that it was -44C. Yes, we had plugged the car in overnight so we hoped that all would be well with our new wheels. We got all kitted up in our gloves, hats, down jackets, boots, scarves etc and ventured into the out of doors.

The car doors opened which was a good sign. The key entered the ignition without a problem. This is where the progress ended. Trying to get the car in neutral was like arm wrestling with a40 foot python, the transmission fluid was virtually a block of ice. Upon engaging the ignition our ears were treated to symphonic reverberations that sounded like the primordial growls and intestinal machinations of some monstrous metal-eating car compactor rather than from the engine of our new vehicle. We are quite positive we woke up everyone within a 4km radius. For what seemed like forever the bizarre guttural, grinding sounds continued until after what seemed like an eternity, the engine turned over and the pistons started doing their thing. It sounded like a 143 year old smoker was trying to cough up a huge loogie from somewhere in the bottom half of the lower lobe of their right lung. After a moment a high-pitched whine started emanating from under the hood that sounded like 1000 castrated cats mourning in unison for their long lost naughty bits.

At long last the car began to sound half normal although now loud clunking noises could be heard. We turned up the radio.

The car seats were frozen. It felt like we were sitting on cold cement and we cursed ourselves for not buying a vehicle with heated seats. When we tried to close our doors all we got was a loud thud. The door latch mechanism was frozen to the point that it wouldn't clasp shut. No matter how hard we slammed (probably an error as metal will shatter at extremely cold temperatures) the doors wouldn't remain shut. Spending 5 minutes outside trying to figure out the latching mechanism and coming to the fairly obvious conclusion that human beings were not meant by God to endure these types of temperatures, my hand started to go numb and began to ache with the cold through my gloves.

After 15 minutes of warming up the car, nothing was really warming up. Ice was forming on my glasses and on the inside of the windshield from our breath. The heater was still blowing cold air. Like idiots we still had the fan on high. Because of this, I think the wind chill factor in the car probably exceeded -50C.

Realizing that we weren't going to get any warmer any time soon we figured we'd try to beat the frostbite by hurrying up and driving to work. We got onto the road and it was as if we were riding in a cart with wooden wheels. The tires had frozen square. It was an amusement park ride like the carousel ...up and down...up and down... And LOUD! Because the doors weren't closed they were banging around on the latches. It was deafening! We decided to take an extra trip around the block to give the wheels a chance to thaw out before hitting the highway at speeds of 100km/hr. We would have probably dropped our suspension on the road.

We hit the highway and the fog reduced visibility to about 10 metres. Coupled with the iced up windshield and glasses Sarah had to navigate for me. We navigated by following the snowpack on the right side of the road. once in town and closer to the river we had to slow to about 20km/hr to see where we were going and to avoid the school kids running randomly into the street.

By the time we got to drop sarah off at the school she was working at i had to go inside to get warm. During the drive, our feet and hands and face got progressively colder and colder. It was actually scary. Even if we had to stop the car on the side of the highway, we wouldn't have got any warmer...the heater just kept blowing cold air.

Of course the schools are still open and everyone goes to work. a few people will mention that "it's kinda cold eh?" but that's about it. these yukoners are tough buggers.

So unfortunately we can't put "Winter" in the top 10 cuz if this is winter, then you can have it! but as my uncle bruce said, "think of the stories you can tell your grandchildren!" So there you have it. The 10th best thing about living in the Yukon is:

#10 - You get to tell some really crazy stories to your children and grandchildren.

***And did i mention that the drive is uphill both ways?

yours in solidarity with our frozen oilpan,

jole

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Joel...I can't believe you would subject your brand new car to such torment! You should have considered its feelings and walked to work.



Aaron

4:58 PM

 

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