Innovations in snowplows

On my morning commute, I saw something that got me excited and that is, the latest innovation in snowplows. The traditional setup is to have a concave blade that can plow straight ahead, plow right or plow left. The new plows have the blade split into two sections each which can be independently angled. What this means is that at a twist of the joystick the blade can change to a "V" shape or the shape of an arrow or one part at a 90 degree angle and the other straight ahead or whatever combination meets the needs of the situation.

10 days to go before my next winter adventure

Tonight, we had our planning meeting for the uOttawa Adirondacks winter camping, snowshoeing and mountain climbing meeting. Steph, one of the guides, walked us through our gear list and hammered home the fact that we will need two sets of clothes, our day outfit that will get wet during the day and our night set which will keep us warm, dry and toasty overnight. During these meetings he likes to put the fear into the foreign-exchange students so that they take him seriously when he says to pack warm clothing. This year he toned it down a bit. I think this will be the fifth trip that I have taken with Steph and they are always fun and interesting. We talked about peaks and will likely climb Algonquin Peak or maybe Phelps mountain this year on Saturday. The weather-of-the-day will determine which peak we attempt to summit. I talked to Steph about changing the trip date in 2009 to the April 3-4 weekend so that it does not conflict with the Boston Tea Party. It would be awesome if Jason could come on the trip in 2009. With Easter coming up rather quickly, I'll be visiting MEC a couple of times over the next couple of days to load up on provisions.

Too much snow for some…

This morning on my commute to work I passed Alf. He was on his roof with a shovel trying to offload two feet of snow that had accumulated over the past couple of days. Alf was rightly concerned about the snow load of his roof. Earlier in the day in the hamlet of Westboro, near where I live and the home of MEC, a roof collapsed due to the weight of the snow. The family escaped but the house is toast. My first exposure to snow loads was when we were building my parent’s deck and had to build it in a certain way to meet the snow load standard published in a reference book. As I think about the snow load tables, they make sense given what recently happened in Ottawa. We are now within a foot of exceeding the 1970 record and strangely enough the locals are praying for another of foot of snow.

Let it snow...Let it snow...

As I type this entry it is snowing. We are within three feet of exceeding the snowfall record set in 1970-71 of 444.1 cm or 174 inches or 14.5 feet. Our current tally is 357 cm or 140.5 inches or 11.7 feet. We are expected to get another foot overnight. As I was heading back to Ottawa earlier this week we got another foot. The local newspaper claims that the average resident has shoveled the equivalent of 16 rhinos or 37, 572 kg or 16,970 pounds.

All this snow is good news as it is the first time that I have snowshoed in March. The plan is to trek along the Ottawa River for a couple of miles on Saturday. Earlier this week, I signed up for the UOttawa Adirondack snowshoeing adventure. It is a long weekend of snowshoeing, winter camping and mountain climbing at the end of the March. I am hoping to convince the organizers to change the date for next year's outing so that Jason can come along. But with more snow on the horizon I'll be snowshoeing for the foreseeable future.

SwingD for Fri = 14d

Sent from my iPod

Shoveling with an ice scraper

Over the last little while the Ottawa area has been getting a record amount of snow. On the weekend, I saw something that caused me to stop and have a good laugh as a parent was trying to shovel snow in their driveway using an ice scraper. They were I think on their way to a son's hockey practice didn't have enough time to clear the driveway so they were clearing a path for the tires to drive down with an ice scraper. Meanwhile, I could hear the son in the car beckoning the father to hurry up otherwise they were going to be late. It was funny as I've never seen an ice scraper used this way.

wo -- 8 hill repeats -- warm legs, sore and tired