I have arrived! Mostly. Still with a crazy amount of stuff to grab from Vancouver and bring here, ideally before the snow falls.

It’s so unlikely that’s going to happen. I’m okay with that because if I’m going to be a mountain resident, at some point my delicate coastal self is going to have to become okay with driving in snow. Which scares the crap out of me for some reason. I know that it shouldn’t, especially considering what an awesome driver I am all the time. But there’s something about sliding around on ice or in snow that just freezes me cold. And it goes deep, psychologically. I can achieve an enlightened state of panic whenever I think about getting behind the wheel and traversing somewhere in the winter. Somewhere in the winter where it snows, because the coast is delightful for that sort of thing.

Yet in some ways, it’s way worse on the coast. Because when the bad weather does happen, I’m surrounded by thousands of other drivers who have no idea what they’re doing. And mayhem ensues. Winter of 2009, Vancouver got an insane amount of snow, just as my plane landed and the poor cab driver I enlisted to drive me home was just terrified the whole way. Along the route, as we crawled along at never more than 25 km/hour, we watched innumerable cars creeping along, sliding along, swerving back and forth as the drivers inside them having their own private panicky prayer filled moments.

I resolved to never be like that. So I’m hopeful that now I’m in a place where people actually know how to drive in the snow, I’ll be an anomaly of panic and fear and lots of silent weeping. Though I did not too bad when I drove my lovely Nina across northern ontario in April, 200 km through a blizzard at 50 km/hour. Sure there was lots of praying and panicky moments, especially when I realized that the energy drink I had thought would help me get through the madness alertly decided it desperately needed to vacate my system about 60 km before I was ready for it to. Terrified to stop for fear I wouldn’t be able to go again, I resolutely decided that the danger of a bladder infection was far more appealing than having to clean my truck once I did finally make it to somewhere with lights and town and people who would share in my amazement that a crazy girl from the westcoast could manage to make it through a northern ontario blizzard unscathed.

Best driver ever.