Hi, James!  Recently you wrote in a message to Ardith Hinton:

AH>  My body has a few quirks, though, to keep me humble....  ;-)

JB>  Is *that* what they are for!?! 


          It's as good an excuse as any, I guess....  :-))



AH>  Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow... [chuckle].

JB>  RRR!!! You two chuckle all you want, but I have a cul-de-sac
JB>  *full* of spoiled neighbours, who don't seem to own snow
JB>  shovels. On my way to the community connection today, I expect
JB>  to volunteer to dig a few out again.


          I hear you.  We've had similar problems with a few of our
neighbours, and I'm not unaware of the difficulty of getting around... much
of it caused by the thoughtlessness of other people!  Nora's wheelchair can
handle a few inches of new snow.  It's good enough to take her home from
wherever she happens to be when the stuff begins to fall.  If there is an
accumulation of twelve inches or so... as we had yesterday... I can glance
out the window & say "We're not going anywhere for awhile." 
We know what we are up against.  The real problem begins when slush
accumulates at the intersections & freezes overnight, when the local
stores don't bother cleaning up the gunk which falls off their awnings into
the middle of the sidewalk, and when packed snow is quite treacherous.  We
could be more than halfway to our destination before we encounter these
things.

          When it doesn't snow around here we have other problems... and
again, I blame other people more than I blame Mother Nature.  We get
several inches of rain within a few days, for example, and all the sewers
are plugged because the burning of leaves is now forbidden & the city
work crews seem to be waiting for the last leaf to fall before they do
their annual cleanup of same.  On a number of occasions I've arrived at an
intersection with Nora & found a raging torrent or, at the very least,
a mud puddle large enough to hide the curb.  She broke a front wheel under
such conditions when the bottom of a ramp was invisible.

          In less inclement weather, people build sidewalks & forget to
include ramps along their "detour routes".  One of our friends
also broke a front wheel in such a situation.  The only alternative was to
go six or eight blocks out of her way.  She decided to risk using the curb,
but her chair couldn't handle it.

          Oh... and here's another example.  We should keep cars off the
road & take the bus in this weather, right??  In theory it seems like a
good idea.  In practice it doesn't always work as planned.  We heard on the
news that only 20% of the Vancouver buses were operational this morning. 
The guy who was supposed to authorize someone else to de-ice the trolley
wires misread a memo... (sigh).



AH>  We could use some ideas, though, about attaching a snowplough
AH>  in front of this rig.

JB>  I wonder if they make chains and skis for chairs. 


          Probably not.  But you've just given me another idea.  What about
the ships which break through the ice up North?  How do they do it??  Might
come in handy to be able to do that with the frozen slush at the street
corner....  ;-)




--- timEd/386 1.10.y2k+