Winter holiday week brings the sunshine

After getting attacked by hungry reindeers I've been in so much pain and shock that I couldn't lift my fingers to blog anything. Of course, I was able to ride around and get some pictures.

Hmm, let's see. Two weeks ago it used to snow a lot. I think it snowed nearly every day. It was cold, fluffy snow so it made some impressive snow drifts where the wind dropped it.

Snow plow men were happy, as they were money by the bucket. (The thing in front of the front loader is a bucket, right? So I guess that was a pun!) The piles were getting higher and higher. Here's one big pile blocking the view on the intersection. It''s as high as the traffic signs, so you'll have to be almost in the intersection to see if anyone is coming on the big street.

It's not so bad in this intersection. I should have taken a photo of a really nasty intersection for cyclists. Cars have only a 60 degree turn instead of an usual 90, and even the curve radius isn't tight enough so they'll be going too fast when they turn off the road (which has 60 km/h limit). When there's a snow pile so high that only my head might be visible to drivers and my lights are not, I'm not taking any risks on trusting them to yield like they should.

Although today a lorry driver did yield. :-)

It doesn't snow a lot here in Very Northern Florida. Usually it's an inch or three at a time. But it does add up. All kinds of park furniture, like benches and trashcans...

and street furniture like bollards will be buried in snow. For obvious reasons there aren't too many bollards around. Small metal boxes for electric or phone networks will be lost too. They sometimes have a stick painted in yellow and black on the roof so the maintenance crews will find them when they get buried in the snow, and the snowplow men will not plow them away.

Then, last week the snowy cloudy days stopped. It rained water! Just a little, but it should be against the law anyway. I makes me wet! Sun shone brightly, and warmly enough to melt some snow off the railing. Is this the first sign of the spring?

This week is the Winter Holiday week for elementary schools and high schools in the region. Southern parts of Finland had the holiday earlier, before all the snow melts away there. Not quite that warm here. Skiing conditions are great.

Today I got jealous. The cars have ice free streets, and what do I get? Icy bikeways, with run off water making them slippery! With two inch deep tyre tracks, when the slush freezes!

A look in the other direction shows that it'll be a long while before the bikeways will be ice free. The trees cast a little shadow on the path and there's no sign of the ice melting. Add in a few weeks of possible fresh snow, and the fact that a lot of the bikeways go through woods, and we'll be talking about April.

Except this sunny slope the bikeways were in good shape, and on the other hand the streets weren't totally ice free, either. There are shadows on the streets too. In fact, at the moment the gritted bikeways are better than the ungritted streets.