And no, they aren’t Cat Yard Dreams or even Shoreline Dreams. I can’t actually remember what they were, oh yeah, something about taking a car trip with my mother. Yes, it was a Packing Dream! And a Driving Dream. And a People From the Other Side Dream. Oh joy. (Disclaimer: I actually like to drive but I occasionally have weird dreams/nightmares about driving.)

Let’s time travel instead. Today my cute little Timehop iPhone app served up some Lovelies from the 2014 Polar Vortex winter. This was yet another shoveling session. By what the sky looks like I’m thinking I took these just after an post-work shoveling session? Or maybe not. My entry from that day is a bit cryptic as to what I was actually doing (except for backing the Frog Hopper outta the driveway) and what time of day I was doing it.

Can I just say that now that we are in the second half of February 2016, I can say [guardedly] that I am finally getting past the PTSD of surviving the Polar Vortex winter. It was a winter of shoveling/salting almost every day and our city got behind on clearing the streets early in the winter and never quite caught up so even some of the main roads were slippery pretty much all winter. I telecommuted something like six days that winter and I think it was around the same number of days that we did not get a mail delivery. I am *not* complaining about that!

You would think a native Yooper would love those kinds of conditions. I loved *some* of them. I loved shoveling all that snow (yes, really). I loved that the streets were lined with huge snowbanks all winter. I used to walk to school on top of snowbanks like that. I loved the beauty I encountered on my morning walks under the stars or falling snow, at least during the period when the sidewalks were easily navigable with YakTrax. I did NOT love the driving. Jeebus! We won’t even go there. I did not like the inevitable thaw and freeze season when ice formed and even YakTrax were not enough to keep me upright without picking my way slowly along using my hiking pole and iPhone flashlight as aids. I lost a couple of 0-skunk-30 Walking Friends that winter because of ice-related injuries. I miss those friends. (They didn’t die, they just stopped walking outdoors.)

Last winter was nowhere near as horrific as the Polar Vortex winter but it had plenty of moments. This year? It doesn’t look anything like the pics around here. I have used my YakTrax a handful of times this winter and for most of those I have stuck them onto a pair of Keen sandals. I haven’t used my hiking pole at all, knock on wood. This morning (16 degrees) I walked in Keens without YakTraks. There was intermittent ice on the streets and sidewalks but for the most part, the pavement was dry and I could see where the ice was and strategize how to navigate it on the fly.

Two years ago it was so hard to get around on foot, I was kind of wondering something like, “am I getting old or what?” While it was largely the weather that made me wonder that, I did not walk to the Plum Market on top of the snowbanks like I once did walking to school as a kid. Another thing that smacked me in the face is how hard it would be for an elderly person who couldn’t drive any more (like my mother, who died at 91 in 2012) to try to navigate the mess that our streets and sidewalks were, to get to the bus stop…

My brain is going off in a whole bunch of different directions at this point but I will stop for today.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 18th, 2016 at 7:44 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.