on 12-23-08 23:12: Ardith Hinton to James Bradley re: click click

 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.


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

The day I read this - some two weeks prior to my writing, for reasons we've
covered elsewhere [-; we had an unusually precipitous December. (The third
largest on record.) I saw an unescorted fella in a powered chair spinning his
wheels. What brought me to his attention, was a big burly driver at the
adjacent light jump out of his vehicle to help. Through most of Christmas week
- belated well wishes BTW - I had two and a half vehicles fail me, up to and
including today. The refusals to boost me, I can count on one hand, and usually
came from two women in a car, or from people in new vehicles that supposedly
knew how buried their electrical connections are. The funniest story there, was
on Christmas day when two fellas stopped in a brand new Saturn and popped their
hood expecting to be good (new?) Canadian citizens. After looking around for
ten seconds, I was teasing the driver that, "I *think* I can see a red wire up
there, but I'd need a screwdriver to get to it." I sent them on their way with
my warmest Christmas wishes, and the best Happy New Year I could. Little did I
expect the next arse to park in the very same spot, and refuse to move so
someone *would* be *able* to boost me. Just as well, as I was overdue to call
it a wash and take two Aspirin and a hot toddie anyway.


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

I started watching a new reality series on the tube lately, called Ax Men. It's
about Oregon forest harvesters, where one episode covered an unusual storm
there they were weathering. "Mother nature doesn't play
favorites." was a sage
bit of wisdom from one of the experienced cutters.

I think what you are referring to with your puddle troubles, is called cultural
lag. If we didn't have pavement, we wouldn't have the water runoff issues, but
we wouldn't have as well maintained a place for so many vehicles. So, we have
unions saying, "I won't do that for free." Government is in place
to say, "We
have a mandate to pay you as little as possible to do that." and management who
says, "They don't pay me enough for this." Well, the ones with a conscience
would say that I imagine.


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


"They don't pay us enough to build temporary ramps, or it would have been
factored into the work order." )-:

 AH>           Oh... and here's another example.  We should keep
 AH> cars off the road & take the bus in this weather, right??

Where's the fun in 4WD? 

 AH> In theory it seems like a good idea.  In practice it
 AH> doesn't always work as planned.  We heard on the news that
 AH> only 20% of the Vancouver buses were operational this
 AH> morning.  The guy who was supposed to authorize someone
 AH> else to de-ice the trolley wires misread a memo... (sigh).

That's a stalwart excuse. 

 AH>  We could use some ideas, though, about attaching a snowplough
 JB>  I wonder if they make chains and skis for chairs. 


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


Horse power and tonnage... Enough of those, and your could make your own
temporary chair ramp. Inclement or not!  


... "Toto, I don't think we're in DOS anymore..."
___ MultiMail/Linux v0.49

--- Maximus 3.01