OUTSIIIIIIIIIDE
So our temperature swung up to 45 degrees today (!!!) and I finally, FINALLY got to run outside.
I haven’t gotten to run or walk outside (apart from going to campus and/or the grocery store) THIS ENTIRE MONTH.
IT’S THE TWENTIETH.
I was losing my freaking mind on that treadmill, man.
It’s GUTTER CARNAGE
(Get it? Instead of utter carnage it’s gutter okay I’ll stop.)
So one of the gutters on our condo building is a problem child and consistently looks like this once it gets cold and then warms up so that things start to melt:
What a monstrosity.
Anyway, I got home tonight and found this:
Mega Icicle had crashed to the ground, taking the whole gutter with it.
There were actually huge chunks of ice like halfway across the parking lot. Someone had already taken the broken piece of gutter and put it in the snow next to the dumpster, haha.
Calgary: if the cold doesn’t kill you, the ice sure will!
NO BUT SERIOUSLY IT’S COLD YO
Oh my god.
OH MY GOD.
So this was the temperature when I headed into campus this morning.
No, I didn’t walk in (though I thought about it, haha). Instead, I took the bus.
Here is the scene from the bus stop in front of our house. Doesn’t the air look frozen?
Anyway. Took the bus in but decided to actually take it down to Brentwood Mall ‘cause I needed groceries. It’s about 0.36 miles from the Fresh Co there to the math building, so I figured walking back to campus after getting groceries wouldn’t be too bad.
Ha.
Have you ever been outside in feels like -53? It’s colder than anything I’d ever experienced, that’s for sure. Like, -40 is cold. But dropping it another 13 degrees? Ouch.
Ouch.
Needless to say, I took the bus home after I was done with work. I was actually surprised at how many students were in my afternoon class given how cold it was.
Edit: there’s ice on the inside of the Kines building doors. Freaking brr.
It’s Cold, Yo
Every year we get like two two-week periods of absolute hellish cold. Usually one of these periods overlaps perfectly with winter break (end of December-ish) and the other happens sometime around he start of Winter semester (mid-January).
We didn’t really have much of a cold snap in December, but HOLY HELL it’s cold right now.
We’re talking “feels like” temps in the -40s.
And it’s just going to get colder of the next few days!
IT’S WINTER, YOU SONS OF BITCHES
TIME FOR SNOW
TIME FOR COLD
TIME FOR ME TO REGRET THE FACT THAT I AM A LIZARD
RIP Good Winter Coat
So y’all know that orange coat that I brought way back when I moved here in 2014? The one that cost like $5 at Goodwill but has gotten me through eight hellish Canadian winters?
Yeah, he dead.
The zipper finally decided to BE FREE and, in my haste to repair it (since it’s still hella cold here), I made it so it couldn’t be anything BUT free and now it doesn’t zip at all.
So that blows.
But hey…eight years is a long time for me to have an article of clothing in which I walk. I am SUPER destructive with my walking clothes. You can see how bleached out this coat is. And it’s got a big hole in the back from thousands of miles of rubbing against my backpack.
RIP buddy, you were my warm winter friend.
Now I have to get a new coat before next winter, haha.
GAS GAS GAS
So today was the warmest day in like a week and a half and I was SO SICK OF BEING INSIDE that I decided to try running in the snow.
By “snow” I mean the compact snow on the river trail. I’d walked on it yesterday once things warmed up a bit and I felt like it was something I could run on, so I got on my winter running clothes and went to try it out.
It sucked.
I have no idea how people can run on compact snow, because I certainly can’t. I don’t know if I push off harder with the balls of my feet than most people, but it was definitely very slippery and hard to get a good footing. So super frustrating.
Once I got to the first point in the trail where I could get back off (which was like 0.2 miles, haha), I crossed the street and went back to the other side of the road where there was just a sidewalk. This looked relatively clear, so rather than give up on running today entirely, I decided I’d go a few miles on the sidewalk to see if that was better.
And it was.
There were a few snowy/icy places where fartbags hadn’t shoveled, but it was much clearer than the path. So I ended up weaving up and down a bunch of the side roads and going back and forth on the main road until I got to my standard 14 miles. It wasn’t the most enjoyable of walks because of the ice/snow, but the temperature was actually a nice one for running and it definitely beat running on the treadmill.
Plus, it’s only supposed to get warmer this week, so hopefully the sidewalks (if not the trail) will be clearer by the time I run again on Thursday or Friday.
YAY!
Edit: I have about six blisters on my toes and my quads hurt like hell. I definitely have a different stride and toe grip on the snow/ice than on regular pavement. Which is to be expected, I guess, but still. Ouch.
It’s getting colder.
It’s inevitable.
Calgary winters are long, dark, and sometimes brutally cold. The only two things that make up for them are a) summer days that aren’t usually too hot and daylight that lasts from 5 AM to 11 PM, and b) the fact that Calgary is a very sunny city, meaning even on a lot of those butt-freezing cold days, the sun is out, which makes a big difference.
This winter is going to be especially hard because I usually make it through the winters at least in part by being able to look forward to going down to Moscow for a few weeks over Christmas break.
That’s obviously not happening this year.
And another challenge for this year (apart from, y’know, trying not to get COVID): I got super into running over the summer, as you all likely know if you’ve been reading my blogs. While I feel like I could get used to running in the cold, once there’s snow and ice on the ground, I’m not so sure. The last thing I want to do is bite it on a patch of ice and screw up my leg (or something else) and be out of commission for any period of time.
I mean, I’ve got my treadmill, of course, but I don’t think I could run 14 miles on a treadmill. It’s a slightly different set of muscles and the furthest I’ve ever gone without stopping is about 8 miles.
Plus, running outside is SO MUCH MORE FUN.
So that’s going to suck once winter really sets in and doesn’t leave until like the middle of May.
SNOW WAY
Sung to the tune of Frère Jacques:
It is April, it is April
What is this? What is this?
Winter can go die now, winter can go die now
I am pissed, I am pissed
WINTER APPROACHETH? WINTER NEVER LEAVETH!
Ah yes, April. The dead of winter.
What the shit, Calgary?
Also, it’s supposed to get to like 50 degrees tomorrow, so guess what’s going to happen to all that snow? Time for sidewalk flooding!
BUH.
Let it Blog
OOPS I DISCOVERED “LET IT GO.”
Can you believe I’ve never actually listened to that song until now? And that I still haven’t seen Frozen? You’ll notice, once I get my November music posted, that I now have like 7 versions of the song though, haha.
Though this one’s my fave, because the Piano Guys are awesome and that white cello is super beautiful.
Toasters are Intrinsically Brave
I just hit my 130,000th stumble on StumbleUpon. That translates quite concisely to, “Claudia spends way too much time on the internet.”
In addition, I just found a video of the entire 2010 Winter Olympics opening ceremony.
Rockin’!
Eigenblogger 