Friday, February 26, 2010

Cold Snap


February 1994 was indeed the coldest winter in Ottawa that I can remember. I am not referring to the amount of snow and ice we got that year. I'm talking about extreme cold where the mercury falls well below minus 30 degrees resulting from air sweeping down on us from the Arctic. There's no need to check with the weather office. Just listen when I tell you that I had to look down when I was trying to find the red mercury column on my thermometer nailed to the garden fence. I don't like cold. Cold to me is anything below the freezing point. I wanted to be born in the sub-tropics but something went wrong. Notwithstanding, here's what happened.


I awoke earlier than usual one Tuesday morning due the the noise of my furnace rattling away for hours on end without shutting itself off. I pulled the blankets back up to my neck to take advantage of the warmth. I saw signs of early daylight beginning to show through my bedroom window so I got up to take a look outside. Heavy grey smoke was slowly spiralling upwards from each and every house within sight telling me that furnaces were working overtime. I thought, “Crap! its bloody cold outside” but I had no idea how cold it really was. You might think that this is nothing out of the ordinary for February in Ottawa but keep on reading. I save my punch lines to the end.

I was going over my scheduled meetings for the day over my bowl of cornflakes and banana slices in milk. I had to submit financial forecasts before noon; sign several performance review and appraisal forms; and attend a meeting with senior staff. My workload that day combined with the bitter cold outside did not put me in the best of moods. Some people, I thought, would pull a sickie and take the day off but that was not my style. I had never done that - and I didn't plan to start now. I had to get to work.

Getting ready to leave was the usual pain of hat, gloves, long-johns, winter coat and snow-boots. Today was a real cold one so I put on an extra scarf as well. Thank God I'd had the foresight to park my Chevrolet Cavalier inside my garage that night. I hated scraping ice off car windows every morning. The heat in my garage had melted the ice and snow on my car overnight leaving water droplets all over the roof, hood and trunk. “Good!”, I thought to myself. “No scraping car windows today.” I opened my garage door and backed my Cavalier out into my driveway. I decided to put my briefcase in the trunk before heading off to work - and that's when the freak of nature occurred.

When I stepped-out into the cold my breath turned white and the hairs in my nostrils froze solid. I opened the trunk and I put my briefcase inside. The moment I closed my trunk, I noticed the droplets of water starting to shake and vibrate with increasing frequencies like so many go-go dancers. I watched them with utter fascination. Then, instantly, each droplet simultaneously made a loud “snap”, as loud as a fire-cracker, and splayed-out into a frozen spider-web covering the entire surface of my trunk. I couldn't believe that I had just seen water flash-freeze - inches before my eyes.

Now, today, the word “Cold” has an entirely new meaning for me.











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