14-Feb-13
Well, I’m on my way home
from the great white north on Delta, the airline whose hub is in Minneapolis
due to its acquisition of Northwest Airlines some years ago. Thanks for the direct flight Delta; you’re
the best. It’s Thursday evening now and I’ve been here
since Sunday evening; time to get back to the wife, kid, tike and pooch (who is
so depressed right now by my absence she should be in the drug commercial where
everything is grey and the depressing classical music is playing in the
background).
I’m looking out the
window and all I see is white, white and more white with some patches of dark
blue thrown in for what I presume are trees not yet completely covered with
snow. See, ever since I saw snow thicker
than 1.5” for the first time in my life when I was 28, in the Cascade Mountains
of Washington over Spring Break, I’ve wanted to experience a real winter. Not our Texas winters with maybe a 0.5” of
snow every other year and temperatures struggling to get below the
mid-20s. Nah, I wanted to experience a
winter where you have to have a battery warmer on your car battery so your car
will start in the morning. I wanted to
experience a winter where the walk between the office and your car makes you
cry. I wanted to experience a winter
where I would see people going nuts for lack of sunlight.
Did I experience these
things? No, I did not. However, I got snowed on and learned a
lot. Here is some of what I learned:
Snow plows are a fact
of life during the winter. What was my
first sight upon looking out the airplane window upon landing in Minneapolis
(MSP)? About fifteen slow plows lumbering
down the runway beside us in what appeared to be single file (though what I
later learned was staggered), their huge headlights piercing the fog and snow
like giant craft from some Aliens movie.
It seriously felt like I was on another planet looking at those things. Come to find out everybody with a driveway
owns a snow plow just like in Texas everybody with a lawn owns a lawnmower. Unless of course you pay someone to do it for
you. And there’s a lot of that. I kept wondering why I saw pick-up trucks
with plow attachments on the front of them.
Were they contracted by the city?
Nope, they were making money plowing peoples’ driveways. A lot of them were landscapers who of course
don’t have as much to do during the offseason.
There are three options
to clearing your driveway. The first and
easiest is paying someone to do it for you.
The second is using your own snowplow, a contraption that looks fairly
similar to a roto-tiller and requires, according to one of my shuttle drivers,
at least a 15-year old to operate it competently despite the fact that it is
self-propelled. The third option is to
bust out that old snow shovel and shovel the snow yourself, Charlie
Brown-style. This is ok if there is
maybe an inch or two of snow but not for more than that and particularly now
when the snow is ‘wet’ and thus heavy.
Yeah, there’s heavy snow and light powder.
The really fun part
about snow plowing is that it doesn’t just heat up the snow and evaporate
it. Nope, it just moves it from one spot
to another. Your snow plow blows the
snow from your driveway onto your lawn.
The city snow plow that comes through your residential neighborhood
blows the snow onto your lawn AND your driveway which of course is fun if
you’ve plowed your driveway. Actually,
the city plows always hit the major highways first and then work their way down
the major roads to the small ones. So
for your commute the toughest part is usually getting to a road that’s plowed,
after which you’re probably golden.
Unless there’s ice caused by rain falling and then freezing. Or black ice which forms when it’s so cold
car exhaust fumes freeze and coat the road with an invisible coating. While I was there there were small amounts of
ice but not enough for people to be concerned about. And thankfully, my hotel provided a shuttle
that took me everywhere I needed to go so I didn’t have to cope with the stress
of driving.
In parking lots, front
end loaders seem to be the vehicle of choice for snow clearing. Another fun fact about snow plowing is in the
Minnesota winter the temperature doesn’t get above freezing that often. Thus the snow plows must find places to stack
the snow, usually the corner of a parking lot or, if it’s on a city street, in
certain parking spaces. In the parking
lots during particularly bad winters, you might have a pile of snow that’s 45
feet high. It’s been a mild winter for
snow this year so far in Minnesota so unfortunately I didn’t get to see
anything like that.
The lakes are frozen up
here. Yeah, even the big ones though apparently
the ones that get the most wind are the last ones to succumb. This allows of course for ice fishing! Not your grandfather’s ice fishing where some
schlub is sitting on an overturned bucket with one line. No, people can now put ice fishing cabins out
on the ice, complete with beds and cable television (and for all I know, space
heaters). Here’s an awesome article on
it (may require a free subscription):
You can also drive out
on the ice if it’s thick enough. There
are people whose job it is to drill test holes to determine whether the ice is
sufficiently thick as the thickness is not necessarily uniform across the
lake. Sometimes there are specific
‘roads’ marked off for people to drive.
And sometimes people will drunkenly drive off those roads and into a
soft spot in the ice, thus breaking through.
Under bridges are particularly tricky as they are usually the last
places to freeze up. One of the shuttle
drivers told me four people have died this winter already for driving through
the ice. Yeesh.
The lady sitting next
to me is from Iowa and is flying down to Austin to visit her dog for the
winter. Yep, her dog is a snowbird,
eh! Actually, the dog is a labrador
retriever that is being trained to retrieve ducks. Since it’s difficult to train a duck to swim
in a frozen lake, the dog gets sent down south with a trainer for the
training. Apparently this weekend
there’s a test and since she hasn’t seen the dog, named Kyrie (sp?), since
November, now was a good time to visit. The
dog is actually is down in Fayetteville just southeast of Austin and is two
years old (six months is the minimum age to begin training). No word on whether the dog will be nervous
during the test, eh.
I didn’t really catch
much in the way of different use of language up here. Many people do have a bit of a north woods
accent but nothing overpowering.
Disappointingly, I didn’t hear anyone say “You betcha” or “Oh
geez.” I got excited when a lady at the
hockey game I attended called napkins “nappies” but when I asked the people in
the office whether they used that word they looked at me like I was nuts. Now I’m doubting whether I heard her
correctly. Darn. They call soda ‘pop’ but that’s not
exciting.
Since I enjoy attending
Texas high school football games, both for the game and the cultural
experience, I absolutely had to attend a high school hockey game in Minnesota just
to see what it was like. My shuttle
driver, who was amused that a hotel guest wanted to be taken to a high school
hockey game, dropped me off outside the Richfield Arena. There were two games to choose from: Shakopee
vs. Holy Angels and St. Thomas Academy vs. Richfield. St. Thomas Academy was ranked #1 in the AA
division so I figured I’d watch them just in case they got upset (I didn’t find
out until later that Richfield was something like 5-14-1 at the time).
I bought a slice of
pizza and a bottle of water, paid my $8 admission and walked into the small
arena. I passed the ‘Chuck a Puck’ table
where you can buy a puck for a dollar and chunk it onto the ice during the second
intermission. Closest puck to the center
of the ice wins a prize, probably a space heater. I sat down in the Richfield section just in
time for the teams to take the ice.
Richfield had two honorary squirts or something like that, kids who
weren’t more than eight years old, skating out with the Richfield team. Their last names: Gustafson and Mikkelson,
ha! Disappointingly there weren’t many
names I identified as Scandinavian and even fewer people who looked like they
stepped out of a Jack London novel. Oh
well.
I knew it would be bad
when the guy behind me said to another guy before the game, “Think they’ll spot
us ten goals?” Richfield was down 6-0 at
the end of the first intermission. I
turned to my neighbors and half-jokingly asked if there was a mercy rule in
high school hockey. I was secretly
hoping there was so I could leave and go over to the Shakopee game (which ended
at a more respectable 7-1 as I found later, Holy Angels prevailing). Unfortunately, the mercy rule is that in the
third intermission there is a running clock.
My neighbors were actually the grandparents of the only benchrider on
the Richfield team, a freshman.
Richfield had about thirteen kids which was the same number that tried
out for the team. Not good times for
Richfield. They had only two lines to go
up against St. Thomas Academy’s three and the St. Thomas kids were skating
rings around them. At least their goalie
was getting lots of good practice.
For those who haven’t
been to a hockey game, there’s something really odd about it compared to other
sports: the loud rock music. They play
heavy metal music before the games, during the play stoppages and during the
intermissions. It was playing so loud
during the intermission that I could barely hear what my neighbors were saying
(granted, my hearing isn’t the greatest but still...). I also got tired of hearing Green Day’s “We
Are The Enemy” every time there was a face-off after St. Thomas Academy scored
another goal. The music of the second
period was, for some weird reason, Ben Folds Five’s “Rocking the Suburbs”
(...just like Michael Jackson did!!!
Rocking the suburbs!! ‘Cept that
he was talented!!!!). They even bleeped
out the cuss words.
Watching a blow-out
hockey game is more entertaining than a blow-out high school football
game. In a high school football
blow-out, the underdog goes 3-and-out, 3-and-out, 3-and-out, over and
over. They never sniff the end
zone. At least in a blow-out hockey game
the underdog gets a shot on goal every once in a while. At least the St. Thomas Academy crowd didn’t
cheer like crazy every time they scored; I thought it was rather polite
actually.
The second intermission
came around and Chuck a Puck began. It
was the most boring Chuck a Puck I’d ever seen.
No announcer, no enthusiasm, no yells of “that’s my puck!”, no
nothing. They didn’t even announce what
the prize was. It was almost like some
weird ritual that an alien from outer space would presume is something
religious. At least they turned off the
loud music for a little bit. Afterward I
snuck over to the Shakopee game but they wouldn’t let me in without buying a
ticket because “the guy at your game isn’t letting our people in.” So much for ‘Minnesota Nice.’ I headed back into the Richfield game which
at this point had STA up 12-0.
STA quickly rang up
four goals and then went into keep away mode.
Thanks STA coach, that was a bit late but still classy. Richfield was thankfully good enough to steal
a pass every now and again. Also, the
Richfield coach, finally realizing that garbage time started in about the fifth
minute of the first period, let my neighbors’ grandson into the game for all of
two minutes.
I managed to do a bit
of walking around on the snow. I had to
watch out for ice as the temperatures were getting into the mid-30s during the
day, melting the snow prior to the return to freezing temps during the
night. One thing I don’t like about snow
is not knowing how deep it is where you’re stepping. I presume some snow holds weight better than
other snow but I wasn’t taking any chances, sticking to paved surfaces.
Winters are long in
Minnesota. They can’t start planting
their gardens until May at the earliest and are still at risk of a frost. I was told by several people that winter is great
until about Christmastime after which the cold and darkness just get
depressing. The sun may set as early as
four o’ clock in the dead of winter but now in February sets around 5:30. While I was here they saw the sun for the
first time in two weeks. I was so happy
for them, eh. I can’t wait until I talk
to them in summer when Austin is into its 63rd straight 100 degree
day. They also claim that the mosquitoes
start appearing exactly on July 4th.
So now I’m flying home
and it feels like I’m on a starship leaving the ice planet Hoth. I’ll see if I can swing coming back by next
year and in particular plan the trip at the last minute based on a weather
report, eh!
