Posted: Mon Jan 01, 2007 4:55 pm
This was a funny read. 
There was 10cm of fresh snowfall from last night, but it looked like the salt trucks hadn't gone by yet as the road in front of the house was covered in snow but not slush. We headed through town and I was dismayed to see heavy, deep slush on the main roads. I'm going to go on a bit of a rant here, so bear with me... DOES ROAD SALT HAVE A F*CKING "BEST BEFORE" DATE OR SOMETHING??!! WHY THE F*CK DO THEY NEED TO POUND SO MUCH OF IT ONTO THE ROADS??!! Jee-ZUS, but I am getting so sick of the "salt the hell out of it now, let it melt into a goopy mess and we'll plow it tomorrow" mentality around here. The only thing I can figure is that there must be a large stockpile of salt saved up due to the unusually mild winter; now whenever it snows they fling it down at the rate of what I estimate to be one tablespoon for every friggin' snowflake. This just cannot be good for the environment and it definitely is not good for the Ural, as it is showing more rust spots this year than last. Every time I take it out now it comes home with a thicker white coat of road grunge. Oh, and you should see my riding gear... I hope I'm never stranded out in the countryside because the deer and cattle would surely use me as a bigass salt lick.
AN-Y-WAY, on to lighter stuff. We motored out to Hector's fave spot but I didn't let him out for a romp when we got there, as the crosswinds were very strong and cold on that road. He wouldn't have been able to hear his jingle ball, which is just as well because I'd forgotten to bring it along. There were large snowbanks on both sides of the road, too, so we couldn't even access the fields for walkies. Poor Hector was not happy when I told him to stay in the sidecar while I took this pic:
...and he seemed downright annoyed when I fired up the rig and we drove off afterwards. The winds had blown some pretty wicked snowdrifts across some of the less traveled roads and I had some fun by using the sidecar as a battering ram to blast through the thicker parts of them. I was going at a pretty slow pace, around 15-20kmh, which was a good thing because I misjudged the breadth of one of the bigger ones. It was so densely packed that it stopped the sidecar in its tracks and spun the bike around face first into it. I managed to stay on the bike, but poor Hector (who was thankfully lying down at the time) slid way up into the nose of the hack with the force of the impact and had to wiggle his butt back again. I had the knobby rear tire on, so all that was needed was to put the rig in reverse and back out, although it did take a bit of body English and weight transfer over the rear wheel to accomplish this. Lesson learned, I avoided the thicker parts of the snowdrifts the rest of the way.
We had to stick to the back roads as much as possible because all the main roads and highways were already under a few inches of slush and I didn't feel like having to endure another air filter cleaning session today. We eventually had no choice but to take HWY 2 back into town, so I kept the speed down to 80kmh and avoided the bigger puddles as best as I could. We took a short detour down Howe Island Ferry Road for the heck of it and stopped long enough for another photo:
Damn, but the winds were really cold and biting coming off that big old St Lawrence River! After only 65km we'd both had enough and headed back to town, stopping at The Beer Store and the Pioneer gas station before returning to the warmth of the house.[/img]
I just love seeing the pics of Hector. Thanks for sharing in the blog and on your site gummie. HOWEVER....
Thanks for the advice but, then I'd actually have to drive one of those things.... 
