As I write this Sunday afternoon, it’s -9° with a 20-kmh wind from the SSE, but I don’t think it is snowing any longer.

We got our first real snowstorm of the winter Saturday and Sunday. It wasn’t too cold, but there was a fair amount of snow and lots of wind. We are lucky; the way the winds come, we get little snow on our walk and patio. Our neighbour, though, gets it all on her walk and driveway despite a five-foot overhang on her eaves – she can’t even get out of her house after a storm. 

It didn’t look too bad behind our garage, so I decided I just had to go and see if anyone was at coffee this afternoon. I didn’t get too far from the garage before I found myself in quite deep snow, rutted where some vehicle had gone through. By doing some backing and filling, I managed to get through it and started down the driveway to the street. What I couldn’t see was that the snow was very deep and hard, and first thing I knew I was hung up – couldn’t move backwards or forwards.

Shovelling is not in my vocabulary, so I phoned CAA and was told it would be an hour before they could get me a tow truck. I went back to the house and sat down to play games on the computer, but in five minutes Doreen told me the tow truck was there. He had to do quite a bit of shovelling just to find somewhere to hook on his tow chain, but before long he had me out on the road. He laughed – said it wasn’t often he had to pull a car downhill.

Next problem – what to do with the car? There was just no way I was going to get back up the slope into our driveway, and neither was the tow truck. I let him go, and went and had coffee with the Webers and Brekers while I gave it some thought. Berini was out – no parking in our block. Webster, just north of us, was already cluttered up with cars. Finally, I rammed through the deep snow and parked close to the sidewalk on 115^th Street . With any luck at all, I should be able to drive out once our court has been cleared of snow. Otherwise, I’ll have to call my friendly tow truck again.

The streets are terrible. Of course, no snow clearing was done during the storm and the snow is deep and rutted pretty well anywhere you go. Brekers had walked to coffee; I offered to drive them home but they wouldn’t hear of it – they wouldn’t ask anyone to try to drive through that mess.

Here it is, almost the end of January, and we just had our first snowstorm.

The tow truck driver complained that North American cars rarely have tow hooks attached; foreign cars usually do. He had to do quite a bit of shovelling and finally found a hole in the frame that he could attach a hook to. Seems to me at least one hook under the bumper at each end would be useful, and wouldn’t add much to the cost of the vehicle. Manufacturers please take note.