Feeling slightly smug in my winter wonderland

Winter is upon us in a big (for the valley) way! We've had real snow for 5 days now and the temperature has been sub-zero the whole time...weird! Lol, I brushed the snow of my car this morning and it was blowing back at me in the wind instead of falling on my feet in a sloppy slushy mess.

It's beautiful; I love snow, I even like the cold and have been enjoying the all the opportunities to wear my snow gear that I seldom get to use. I should have taken the opportunity to go out last night and enjoy the beautiful Silent Night with my camera...but I was tired and lazy and did not :( I hear there is more snow on the way though, so perhaps I will take the opportunity some evening this coming week.

The opportunities for me to wear snow gear are generally coming in the form of waiting for the bus. Grrr, I love snow and cold, but I now hate driving in it. Missy stays parked and I either walk, take the bus, or annoy those people I know who actually drive in the snow by bumming rides off them. It's not that I'm against the idea of driving in snow in general-I'm against the idea of driving Missy in the snow in her current condition...

1st of all she's a rear wheel drive and we all know about rearwheel drive and snow I'm sure. Not exactly a great combo. I can't change this aspect of Missy so I'm resigned to accept it. Add in the fact that she's a tank, so once she gets going she has the potential to keep wanting to go; I fear not being able to stop her on hills. This is a new fear and I'm not sure where it came from as I have yet to slide through an intersection at the bottom of a hill. Finally, and most importantly(the current condition I referred to above), are her tires; I firmly believe they suck.

When I voice this opinion I generally am faced with the response of "well you just don't know how to drive in snow." I certainly can't argue with my lack of snow driving experience; I lived east of the Rockies for 10 years of my life, but I was little so the only important snow experience I gained was how to effectively tie a long scarf about my neck and head to keep out the wind, keep my touque on, and expose as little of my face as possible to nasty -30's windchill. Maybe I'm being completely naive (and please tell me if I am), but isn't driving in snow sort of like walking in snow? Common sense, reasonable footwear, don't rush, expect the unexpected, and watch out for other idiots who lack said common sense? Nobody has ever told me I'm a bad driver in general (and I'm sure my bro would let me know if I was) so I'm sort of assuming being a reasonable driver should transfer over to snow...mind you, who ever admits to being a less than reasonable driver?

So, tires, snow, smug...getting to the smug part here ;)

I was already to wake up yesterday, take advantage of the relatively clear roads and actually drive to work. I'm not against taking the bus at all. I just don't like having to go extra early (because otherwise I'll be late) and stand outside in the cold because I'm not important enough to have a key of my own. Maybe not the 'greenest' choice on my part...but well, that's just the way it is. The weather, however, had other ideas and snowed on us again and so I took the bus again. I mentally patted myself on the back for a good choice as the bus slowed down quite quickly and did a couple of tiny fishtails in order to avoid running into a 4Runner that was 'parked' only halfway off the road in the gardens on the inside corner of the Dike Rd facing up the hill in the downward lane (did that make any sense?). How on earth did they do that?!

This morning (no work) I got up to beautiful sunshine and decided that I'd test out Missy and my tires to see how things went in this "real" sort of packed snow that is not a crazy sloppy slushy mess. After some serious excavation I found my car (ok ok, serious for here - not exactly "serious" in the way most Canadians would speak of serious ;)). My father had kindly brushed her off for me after the snow last weekend, but since I didn't drive her anywhere this week he didn't see the need to brush her off after yesterday. I think he belongs somewhere that gets real winter and not here on the wet coast. I also think he secretly enjoys pulling out our snowblower (hehe - yes, we have a snowblower!) and making short work of clearing peoples' driveways on our street.

Anyways, back to my car. I cleared her off, got in, started her, tried to move, turned her off, got out, found the shovel and cleared behind her tires (ooops-duh!), got back in, turned her back on, backed up out of my spot, stopped, contemplated a bit, pulled forward back into my parking spot on the edge of our property, backed up again at a slightly different angle onto the driveway, stopped, contemplated pulling onto our street, then pulled forward again back into my spot, turned her off, got out and annouced to my father (who had come out to watch the proceedings I guess) that that was quite enough of that and that'd I'd go back to taking the bus. He, having spent all but 19 years of his life east of BC, laughed at me. Fair enough.

Some minutes later he came inside and informed me that he had taken Missy up and down the street and yes, the tires aren't good, although no tires are great on this surface, and even though the ones I have look like they still have wear left in them, he'd suggest getting a couple of good winter tires to put on the back wheels.

So here I am feeling a bit smug because someone other than myself has finally decided that my tires might actually suck. Woohoo :)

Now, my question is why only two? I understand that the back wheels are the drive wheels, but that's only half the contact with the ground; what about the front wheels that have all the engine weight over them? The ones that the back wheels are pushing around, the ones that initiate a turn? Shouldn't they want to grip better as well? Could someone please explain this to me?

*EDIT* -feeling slightly more smug...
4 it is. Aside from the fact that there are none to be had.

1st Snowfall :)

Playing with my 'ghetto macro' again ;)

Another random thought

(I'm so good at getting distracted by random thoughts while studying. It's too bad I didn't save them all over all these years of school - that could have been interesting reading after the fact. Or maybe not)

I think more than any other sensory trigger, music has the strongest ability to pick me up and throw me backwards into memories of times and places past. Scents can do the same thing, so can food, photos, or revisiting places I've been, but music is by far the most efficient form of such transportation...

Random thoughts

It's 11:30pm. I'm tired of halfheartedly "studying" (using that term pretty loosely) for my Bus 150 exam tomorrow. I'm not done yet-even I have standards. I have to at least read through all the notes, afterall.

The wine is not helping.

The fire and the Christmas music are making it slightly more bearable.

But what I'd really like right now

is a cookie.

Can I please have a cookie?

"Dashing through the snow [mud!]..."

Ok, so when we planned this 6 weeks ago we were fully aware that it might be a "dashing through the snow" sort of run, but thankfully there was no snow to dash through
[...although...that could make for some interesting dashing...it certainly made for some interesting riding long, long ago when I actually rode my bike on regular occasion...anyways, that's not the point of this post...]

Here is the point:
























Woot! Happy girls after a 7km jaunt through the forest. I must say though, it's a really good thing we weren't playing for money with our poker hands, lol.

Since Bazette is such a smart girl she had a camera in her pocket and if you go here you can see what we ran through this morning...gorgeous light on dew covered forest... :)

Likalia and I contented ourself with admiring the view and admiring Likalia's not-quite-so-glaring-white-anymore runners - hehe, thank you muddy trail ;)

We did it!

6 weeks of run/walking-we actually kept it up! I'm proud of us :)

Today is the Comox Valley Road Runners' annual Jingle Bell poker run which was our goal event for the beginning of this 'program'. So if you'll excuse me, it's time to put on some jingle bells, find a food bank donation, and go running through seal bay park seeking out the elusive card dealers-wish me luck for a good poker hand...I wonder where I put my Santa hat...

GAH->Excel

Can anyone explain to me how to get excel to recognize the zeros that my =IF(G28>VLOOKUP(D28,MileageLookup,2,FALSE),G28-VLOOKUP(D28,MileageLookup,2,FALSE),"0") function has returned for values of the logical function that are false? The DAVERAGE and DMIN functions aren't working properly on that column because excel doesn't seem to recognize that the 0's are actually legitimate zero values and not just some sort of place holder.

Grrr.