Icy streets, frigid air. What to do but play street hockey! A sight I have only seen on television before, from back East where it gets {{{cold}}}.

This afternoon eight little kids and a dog showed up in the street right outside my window to bash around a puck, to my great entertainment and enjoyment. The dog was skating (inadvertently) on the thick ice. Not sure if he was having fun but it sure made me laugh.

I don't know of a time when that has happened before in my neck of the woods. Ice hockey in the street. No skates needed. Kids calling for the puck, dog slip-sliding away, trees snow-laden and sun going down. Alert parents watching for oncoming vehicles. So lovely you had to laugh.

And of course, my camera didn't work. Batteries must be dead (somewhat like what happened to my car, cold and dead I guess in all this weather). What kind of a photog am I? Perfect West Coast picture and I missed it.

Yes, we're still snowed and iced in. I do keep going on about it (sorry Eastern Canada to be such wimps) but we're experiencing a very cold and snowy winter, unusual for us where year end is often close to balmy. I've been snowbound for weeks now, only dashing out when absolutely necessary, with the utmost caution, in dire need to be out and about. This week is the coldest yet (-7, -8) and the snow that has lain since before Christmas (most unusual for us to even get snow, never mind stuff that lays around for weeks) has now become icily treacherous. I'm on a side street that doesn't get plowed. I don't remember another year when I didn't have snow tires. Typical! The first time I need them and I had elected in the fall to stay with flimsy little (cheap) all weathers. All the years I change to snow times but don't need them and then...

Even indoors I'm wearing my woolies but kids eh? Out in the snow and ice, hockey sticks in cold little hands, having fun, Rover on point duty.

It was a dreary day til then. But what a good laugh. Talk about going positive. Carpe diem and all that.

A funny kind of wonderful. Or something like that. :)



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/03/2017 08:01PM by Nightingale.

It's more the dangerous cold than the actual amount of snow.

Leave it to kids to have fun in the winter. Thanks for giving us a verbal picture of them.

A beautiful picture, Nightingale. :)

It reads like the opening of a script...

Ahhhhh. Sweet. Sounds like a Snow Village scene.

I hope the dog got a nice place inside to warm up after skating on all fours!

The dog was a scream, dagny. He was on a leash, held by one of the boys, but couldn't stay on his feet. I worried at first that he may not like the skating experience but he seemed OK with it. His legs splayed out in slow motion every time he stood up and down he'd go again. He seemed fine though, the kids were happy, the parents were watching.

It was a great big belly laugh of a half hour for me. I've never seen a dog skating before.

Sweet story!

Lithium batteries do not do well in cold weather.

Pity, because that would have been great to see. :o))



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/03/2017 10:19PM by matt.

I didn't know that about batteries, matt. I was so surprised when I picked up my camera and it was ice cold. It had been sitting on a table by the window. Even though the house is warm I guess the cold seeped in and blasted my poor camera.

It's new and the most expensive camera I've ever purchased. I would have been thrilled to get a chance to use it and for such potentially great pictures.

I'll have to warm it up and nurse it back into action. Now it'll be months before something else photo-worthy pops up. But hopefully next time I'll be ready to shoot.

Same weather here in the Boise area...more snow tonight.Have not had a day above freezing for a month. Sick of it. Wrecking my car on ice has not helped.

Sorry for the auto damage, Kentish...I wish it had not happened.

:(

Hockey on the farm dug-out, baseball in the hay field when haying was done, horse riding all year, chores morning and night. Gopher hunting, tobboganing down the hill, typical farm/country stuff. Now I am an adult and not much has changed. It used to be as a kid, then with the kids and now with the grandkids.

Thank you, Tevai. I had barely turned a corner and touched the gas when I skidded on two inches of compacted snow and ice. All along the road was a snow covered grassy back...except where I ended up against a 5 x 4 cast iron transformer box, Not even a scratch on the box except it was pushed an inch or two off its base. I dutifully phoned the police and insult was added to injury with a $90 ticket for "leaving the traffic lane". Every instinct tells me to fight it but who wants to sit around a court over several days waiting to be called. So we bow to the extortion and pay up.

That is too bad, kentish. I'm sorry too. That is a creative-sounding excuse for handing out a ticket. No heart!

I recently got a parking ticket for $80.00 for being 6 minutes late to feed the metre in a parking lot at a medical building. You know - those places where they keep you waiting an hour to get in for your appointment. Very annoying. I too wanted to challenge it, or make the MD pay, but in the end, acquiesced and paid up. You have to pick your battles in life, unless you have unlimited time and energy, which I do not.

I'm glad you came to no harm though in the leaving of the lane escapade.

A neighbor with a perfect skating lake used to clean off the ice every winter so the neighborhood kids could play hockey. I have a neighbor 2 miles away who has his pond set up for hockey and even has a light plant so they can play at night!

RB

We did this all the time when I was a kid in MN. Hockey in the winter, baseball in the summer, and when the street flooded we could swim or canoe in there. We had no nearby park, so we played in the street.

My sub line shouldn't say "only in Canada" as of course wherever there are kids and ice there will be skating/hockey. I was thinking more of the fact that in my area never before have we had so much snow that stayed for so long and such cold temps that everything iced up enough for skating to be possible. Every year I see news footage of people skating back East on the Rideau Canal and kids on ponds all over frozen Canada, playing what else but hockey. The "news" is that it's never happened to us (or very rarely and never on my street).

It's funny how humans never seem to tire of discussing the weather. Well, it impacts our lives so much. Except not usually in my temperate little corner of the universe. We're like Goldilocks, "just right", neither too hot nor too cold. That's why this year we can't stop talking about the snow, the ice, the cold. And I feel a bit guilty for all the years of not really appreciating what most other Canadians put up with, all that plowing and shovelling and scraping and sliding. We do see news about major or prolonged power outages and traffic pile-ups, always in other communities. Now it's us. The snow is gorgeous, piled up on rooftops and shining in today's sun. Ice pellets are dripping off trees, all sparkly and putting on a good show.

Maybe the news is that we finally have news of the weather variety. A couple of major local bridges had to be shut down as ice bombs from high struts were pelting vehicles down below, breaking windshields, not pleasant on your morning commute. Today a local bridge is shut to marine traffic, as it can't be opened up to allow passage, due to metal and cold and etc. That is kind of scary! Who thinks of bridges not functioning the way you need them to?

But it's cold. I'm in fleecey underwear, INSIDE the house! And it's been long enough. Christmas is over. I'm ready for spring. :)

Forecast: More Snow. On Friday and Sunday.

I'm definitely breaking out the snow tires for Winter 2017! I don't like being stuck, the only alternative being scared while driving on slippery, snowy streets. I finally see why people get groceries delivered. I might even spring into the 21st century and go with drones to deliver from Amazon. It would, after all, be an emergency if I ran out of books!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/04/2017 03:38PM by Nightingale.

Thanks everybody. I enjoyed reading your comments.

I might quit talking about the weather now...

Kids in the Boston area routinely play street hockey (normally on dry streets.) They are quite quick and adept at moving the goals for any cars that wish to pass through. My high school was located right next to the community skating rink. Our school fielded a very good hockey team. I used to take figure skating lessons for P.E.!

Wherever there is routinely an intense winter, you will find people making the most of it.

Some of us are old enough to remember when cars were so infrequent they rarely interrupted a game of real football or whatever seasonal game we were playing.

How old ARE you? :)

We're still skating (on thin ice, haha) and looks like more of the same for the weekend. The snow looks lovely but I've had enough now. For the next decade maybe. It's crazy how such a relatively light snowfall, in comparison to most of the rest of Canada, can send people right round the twist within days. We're having fights at fire halls where people gathered to scoop up free salt (tempers flared when the salt pile petered out), and shovels and buckets getting stolen. Crazy! (So much for all the "nice" Canucks 'round about).

A radio host, who is Australian, asked yesterday after the scuffles around the salt piles, what are people going to do in the Zombie Apocalypse if they get so crazy over a little bit of salt? Oh, that made me laugh. True enough. We're so complacent and not nearly as prepared as we think we are for emergencies.

I've lost my mind too. Spent today doing a week's worth of outside chores all at once due to forecast for more snow over the next four days. As if disaster would strike if I can't get out for a while. At least we won't run out of soup for a month! (Now I start to get the relative wisdom of the food storage idea - OK, not really).

No more kids playing hockey. So I've switched to bird watching. So many eagles dotting the tallest trees along the roadways - more than I've ever seen all at once before. Too bad I had to watch my driving so closely, on all the unscraped, unsalted, treacherous roadways, so I couldn't take a good long look, as such magnificent creatures deserve. It was a sunny (but frigid) day so their silhouettes through the skeleton branches were easy to see and so beautiful.

In a nearby village beside a river we were treated to dozens of seagulls flying in formation. Even though I was parked and could have joined all the people gazing upwards, enraptured, I stayed put as I seem to attract seagulls. I never go to that village that they don't splash my car. One got me once when the driver's side window was open. So. I gazed from safely inside my vehicle, windows sealed. Still incredible to see.

Near home, a heron walked daintily along the roadside (too close to traffic for my comfort though). Gorgeous bird.

I don't know if it's the weather that's bringing us all this birdlife, or the time of year. I need to brush up on my bird knowledge.

Between our plumed pals and the snow-covered mountains (some in the USA that I can see from home) and the (cool) sunshine today, it was great to be out and about.

I hope the kids come back over the weekend. They were a lot of fun to watch too. They will have a few autos to deal with though, no matter how challenging the weather gets.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/05/2017 07:15PM by Nightingale.