Surviving the Storm

We'll call this GUEST BLOG NO.2 or STEVE'S WEEK OF "FREEDOM" PART DEUX (take note that the last so-called week of freedom was approximately one year ago ... I'm not drawing any conclusions from this but you can feel free to do so...). While the last time I posted a blog-entry my tongue was firmly planted in my cheek this time my intetion is to be dead-serious.

For those of you who may not know much of Eastern Canada got, (let's say) pistol-whipped (for the benefit of some of our more sensitive readership) by a nasty winter storm over the past weekend. Earlier in the week, the younger sister, our resident champion athlete, due to her physical superiority (for discussions of inferiority see a future blog entitled THE LIFE AND TIMES OF STEPHEN R ... I mean, seriously, I'd challenge any of you to live with a gold-medallist and a frickin' male model and not encounter feelings of crippling inferiority) felt no fear in proclaiming not once, not twice but three times "I think winter is over." Hubris of this sort seldom goes unpunished ...

So, the snow started on Friday night, really soggy bigs flakes (at least here in Montreal). By Saturday morning the wind had picked up and was basically blowing the snow sideways, replete with little icy pelletes (grappelle) that blow into your eyes like grains of sand and slap you across the face like thousands of tiny scorned maidens. Check out the views of Ste. Curmudgeon Avenue, first looking west toward the Market and then east towards Robin Hood (Prince of Neiges?).




In a normal city this type of storm might hinder the everyday lives of the citizens but in Montreal things continued almost as if nothing out of the ordinary had taken place. Check out our neighbour with his pets (its easy to keep the canine motif running through my blogposts with people like this around), I think their names are (from left to right) Monsiuer Pouf, Herr Gammers, Sloppy Joe, Mademoiselle Paris, Throw Pillow and Head-Smashed-In-Buffalo Dog.



Anyway, I was headed up to the school/the North Pole to meet my friend Rob for beer (you see when guys get together without their wives they don't bother with food ... as John Lennon sang, "all you need is beer"). After nearly being knocked to the ground by a gust of wind which pushed me into a knee-deep snowdrift and then subsequently avoiding the horrible scenario of wiping out on ice more polished than the hairless skin on a male-model's chest, I managed to make my way to the metro. As I approached I began to become confused, like Zoolander in a way ... "who am I", I thought, Stephen Rogers, Drrr. or Roald Amundsen, explorer of the earth's polar regions and first man to reach both the North and South Poles. The fur-lined coat and beard may have had something to do with my identity crisis. [see photo]


Once in the metro, the reprieve helped me sort out the issue, until I arrived at the school and saw this scene where a group of students had gathered after a concert at the music building.


Imagine my surprise when one of them that I knew, lets call him Pete for the sake of anonymity, stopped me to ask what I thought about the ramifications of the aggregate harmonic columns in the Fifth Movement of Pulcininini's Opera No.1, Opus 34. I quickly chirped something back to him and went inside. I met Rob in the lobby and even though he was just visiting from the states where they hardly ever get snow, he was better prepared for the storm than even I was. As they say: "you can rob the Canada from under a man's feet but never from his heart" ... or something like that.



We went out and had a great night indoors. And, just to prove that I didn't make this all up, here's a photo of the day after from the doors that lead out to our balcony. The snow bank was literally taller than me and my (tall) tale.



Guest-blogger, out!!!