Daily Archives: February 14, 2013

Show season advances, which requires trips for essential supplies. During one of those trips, I discovered that one of my local Target stores was expecting a much colder winter than what we’ve received in Dallas so far. Either the manager expected a repeat of the record snowstorm of 2010 or the week-long ice storm of 2011, or s/he came to Dallas from a much higher latitude. Either way, the collection of deeply-discounted winter survival gear brought back lots of memories of my childhood in Michigan.

For the record, when you need them, removable ice cleats are a godsend in Dallas. Unfortunately, you might only need them for a grand total of three days every ten years or so.

And then there were the all-in-one ice scrapers, complete with handles to assist with getting enough torque to take off inches or even feet of rime. I was half-tempted to buy one of these and strap it to the side of my bicycle pack, but the Czarina, as usual, expressed the voice of reason. Voice of reason, voice of doom, it’s all the same with her.

Oh, that was just the beginning. Heavy steel multi-use scrapers for breaking ice off sidewalks and driveways. Standard scrapers with fur-lined gloves sewn around them. Heat packs. Wind visors. It suddenly occurred to me that nobody’s made the definitive Canadian post-apocalyptic road movie, something along the lines of “Depressed Doug”. Or had someone made it after all?

A little treat from the archives. One of the reasons why I keep returning to Texas every time I leave? It’s not just because of the intense rainbows when we get our classic gullywasher storms. It’s not that we regularly get double and sometimes triple rainbows during those storms. It’s that these photos were taken on Thanksgiving Day 2012. Rainbows instead of snowstorms? Yes, thank you.