Sunday, January 17, 2010

HAPPY BOOST

The battery was groaning and weird lights appeared on the dashboard; a booster charge was definitely needed.

On my 12 miles run, I saw water lying on fields, water that had iced up after the last late heavy rainfalls just before the Arctic weather took over. The River had overshot its banks, not as much as before. Lots of lochens were visible. Some front yards were still messy with ice,levels of ice that had been so thick, they still had not responded to the rise in temperature. The recent rainfalls had turned into another coating of ice. Those yards looked lethal.

As a further battery boost, I took a trip to the other town, where I needed to visit particular stores. The roads are full of potholes and they also have scarred surfaces from where the snow ploughs have been working to keep the roads open. Every year I question why road surfaces are not laid down to be more hardy. Surely, there must be some material around that could do the job. That idea, of course, could be sabotaged by road digging for gas and water pipes and all sorts of cables. Those organisations never leave the road in a decent state when they finish their work.

In Canada, whilst on a tour, I was once told that they have two seasons; Winter and Construction. If we are going to maintain our roads' infrastructure, I guess we should have to go down the same seasonal route.

The battery is responding better now, the big boost has made it happy.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

every last drop of snow and ice has already disappeared down here, leaving very soggy greenlands and plenty of potholes in the roads.
the recent bad weather seems to have caused the extinction of the Bin Man as we've not seen hide nor hair of them since long before Christmas...the rats must be loving it!

ZACL said...

I wonder if your local authority saw the genuine winter weather as an avenue for reserving funds on refuse collection, (using H & S as an excuse for some of it) in order to distribute salt and grit. It would be distorted thinking as, like you say, the rodent population will be loving the overspill of refuse, and what about the development of diseases. Sounds like another Naples developing.

Leah said...

They had the same saying in Texas, but it went, "We have two seasons, summer and construction." :)

Sometimes it seems Chicago has winter and summer and NOTHING in between. *sigh* :)

ZACL said...

Hello Leah,

Welcome to my world. Thanks for visiting, I am delighted to hear from you.

The Texas variation of seasons leaves me bemused. How long is Summer, and when is Construction; is there time for it? It is amusing how people see utility work in relation to the changing year.

Ah...Chicago, I did hear it was the windy city. ;)

Leah said...

:)

Basically, construction is autumn, winter and spring. If I remember correctly, summer was just too hot. I always felt the seasons were backwards there. It was too hot to go outside in the summer and the grass turned brown. Then in the winter the grass was nice and green and it was reasonable weather to go outside. :)

Chicago simply is far too cold to go out in the winter and far to hot to go out in the summer. We get about two weeks of reasonable temperatures in the spring and autumn. I'm really ready for a more temperate climate! :)

ZACL said...

Your descriptions of seasons do sound extremes. It really must be difficult to structure a daily life, but I guess people do. Anthropologically speaking, I'd be curious to know how it differs from ours.