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30cm of snow and getting to work

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

This morning I had a follow-up dentist appointment at 08:30. It was snowing heavily, part of what would turn out to be 30cm of snowfall in roughly 24 hours.

Needless to say, I left early and wound up on a jam-packed streetcar that crawled at little more than a walk. It took 45 minutes to travel three kilometers.

Happily, I was out of the dentists' office in about twenty minutes. No quite so happy aside: I'll need minor corrective surgery in my mouth due to a recessed gumline (an inherited result, it seems).

Heading to the street car stop, I heard a passer-by tell those of us waiting in the shelter that the streetcar two blocks ahead of us had gotten stuck in the deep, packed snow (Queen Street had not been plowed) and that we should catch taxis.

I decided to walk to Broadview where I could catch the other street car line.

To make a long story short, normally a three minute cycle ride, took twenty minutes. Altercations were breaking out on the street between drivers, TTC folk, and the many pedestrians dumped off of the street cars. Still under heavy snow, we walked into the gale like so many Yukon prospectors; a single file heading into oblivion.

well OK, it wasn't this bad

And after witnessing the third and fourth disabled street cars of the morning being towed back to the yard I decided that the walk ahead of me would take 90 minutes in these conditions, and that there simply wasn't any point—I'd just have to do it all again on the way home as the street cars were clearly not cutting it and I'd already been told that the buses were unable to climb the hill to Danforth and the subway lines. So I uncharacteristically gave up and went home. Which took another 45 minutes.