More Orangeville (Canada) winter or Canada=SLOP

OK if you have ever lived in Canada save yourself now and just go do something more constructive because these are pictures of ... WINTER.

But if you are from Darwin NT Australia and you keep telling me ... "Oh I'd love to see snow and experience winter", this post is for YOU.

Actually in Orangeville we are lucky because we do get quite a bit of snow and it's sticks around. But road maintenance has to happen and that is what ruins snow. They put down a combination of snow and gravel/dirt to give us some grip on the roads.

This is just a small side street. You can see the gravel/dirt mix that they have put on the road. Hence Canada=SLOP. This stuff is ugly.

Sizing up a bit of chunked icy snow

We have liftoff and soon to be smash.

That snow is got to go somewhere and when the street is a dead end they just make a pile and wait for it to melt away. This one will probably last till May and be a lot bigger. It would be too costly to put the snow in dump trucks and truck them away to a bare field. Not to mention that all that snow has a ton of salt in it which would kill the vegetation.

All that salt and dirt accumulates in the back of your tires. Hence the SLOP. This is why cars rust out so fast here.

This Santa was way bigger than the house

Snow plow, this guy is plowing and dumping the gravel/sand mix

Enough of snow lets go to the greatest store in the world, and it's not IKEA, it's Costco. We are in line for a Hotdog. It's now $1.50 it used to be $1.99 2 years ago.

Pizza $1.99, hotdog with drink $1.50 then add %13 tax. Pretty cheap meal. Oh and the drink is endless. The only bad thing is that they switched from Coke to Pepsi ... BOOOOO

This post is for my Darwin friends

Well everyone in Australia keeps saying that they'd love to experience snow. Well we are in Canada so I'm going to give you my experience with snow and you don't have to be cold or have to shovel it.

We've been in Orangeville 1 1/2 hours drive north of Toronto Ontario, this area is consider just on the southern cusp of the snow belt.

Since we've been here there has been no sun. Today it snowed a little we had to go into the city we used to live in called Brampton. It's 30 min drive at 80km an hour. Here is a few pics from our journey and from yesterdays days outing.

The three pictures below are yesterdays outing.

Canadians are a tough bunch. This store is called Canadian Tire, similar to Bunnings. They eat their hotdogs out in the freezing cold.

This is infront of a grocery store about the same as Coles or Woolies. We are full on Christmas here. When I see how much consumerism is going on here I am amazed.

Yup that's about less than $1.40 a kg for bananas. I don't even know where Guatemala is.

The pictures below are from today outing.

The snow looks really nice on the trees. Here they wrap up some of the trees in burlap cloth so that if they get lots of snow on them it doesn't break the tree.

In some cities you have to clean the snow off of the sidewalk. Here the council cleans it for you with a machine.

This is the driveway covered in snow. 

They clean the main streets from snow but since it is only a few cm they will leave the snow on the street. They only clean the snow if it's a large amount. It could take many days before they clean the side streets.

Driving behind dump trucks that are spraying all the salty water that the snow has become all over our car. Cars rust out very fast here because of the salt put on the roads. We also have a special fluid we put in the windshield reservoir so the water doesn't freeze. It's like a alcohol that's good to -30c 

All that lovely snow turns to slush ... yuck.

This is rock salt that is spread so people won't slip.

Being next to the USA gives Canada great buying power and fruits and veg are very cheap.

Yup we even import Kiwi fruit from 1/2 way around the world

Some people don't clean their cars off. This can be dangerous as the snow will fly off and hit peoples cars driving behind them.

This is where they store the salt. That truck is a snow plow. It is used to clean up the snow around the shopping mall. They dump the salt all over the parking lot in the mall.

This is our bank. It is even open on Sunday. 

The salt is coating the car already. When it is thick I will write something in it and show everyone.

L standing in the snow. It's not too deep yet.

It's 4pm and this is the snow from the front of the house.