Frozen

It's been a wee bit nippy here. Starting with the ice storm shortly before Christmas and continuing on practically non-stop since then it's been... more like the winters I was used to than the ones we've been having lately.

The snow has, for a change, stuck around. It hasn't been so bad biking to work, although with their usual carelessness the city has not cleared any of the bike lanes. The first few weeks after the ice storm, the bike lanes and paths were pretty much unusable.


A jump up to +7 C a few weeks ago thawed most of the ice and snow and uncovered the outer edges of the bike lanes and let the city plow the park paths. It also melted enough of the snow on the side streets to allow cycle tracks of a sort.


The main fun, and I use the term very loosely, has been the biting cold. -15 C is chilly, yo.

Before Christmas, I used the resusable hand warmers I made last year even though I managed to overheat one and burnt a buckwheat-releasing hole in it, which got a little gritty. Then Aged P gave us a box of air-activated warmers. We have been using them diligently; they stay warm long enough to use both in the morning and evening.

The trick is to remember to activate them 20 minutes before I leave in the morning, because otherwise they get nice and hot just in time for me to arrive at school. The other slightly annoying part is that they tend to lose heat when in use because they need exposure to air. Which means you have to take your hand out of the nice warmish glove to get them to reheat. Irony, we haz it.

The other issue is the freezing of the face. I don't like to wrap a scarf around my face because water vapour from my breath tends to lodge in the wool and freeze, or make my chin wet and frozen, both of which are uncomfortable and somewhat painful. The DC solved this problem by startling me with this one evening:

It's a neoprene face mask, made primarily for snowboarders we think. We managed to find a somewhat less dramatic version for me:

Despite the air holes, I had to cut a slit in the mouth area because I couldn't breathe, which also cut down on the fogging-up-and-then-frosting-the-glasses issue. The mask works beautifully. No more frozen face.

Of course, now I can't blow my nose until I take it off.

Anyway, on the few days I haven't biked in to work because of fresh snow, I've Bixi'd home. There's a newish Bixi station at Dovercourt and Queen, which is only 10 minutes away from my apartment, a decided improvement. The Bixi bikes pack snow between the tire and fender and they have to be thwacked every now and then to clear them out or they become unrideable. The last time, I went over the 30 minute limit due to one too many such stops. Still worth it.

The temperature is supposed to go up to a balmy -3 C tomorrow. Can't wait. In the meantime, I'll leave you with some pretty pictures from the ice storm and aftermath, starting with the coveralls the DC left on the deck to air out the night before. Mouse over for descriptions.