The quintessential Vancouver snow story
I just want to get it out of the way, but: the moment when Ryan Seacrest had to duck to avoid getting hit in the face by this crazy kid’s juggling stick while he was hugging his mom is one of the greatest on television so far this year.
Other than that, it’s basically just been snowing and then stopping snowing in Vancouver. This is my story. Last week, I’m on the bus, coming home from school with the dude I TA with. It has just started snowing a little. So we’re on the bus, and there’s some lovely, fluffy snow falling, and we’re going on this slight incline. C. and I are chatting about the class, and whatever, and then all of a sudden the bus stops. The driver announces (not on the loudspeaker) that the bus is sliding, and, with an edge of hysteria in her voice, explains that she is just not driving any more.
We are not at a bus stop. We are just on the road, a few blocks away from the next stop. By some bushes. In the snow. I am wearing a skirt and my still-being-broken-in new Frye Boots. So we walk. Toward Alma we see one of the cable buses, just abandoned on the road, its front end literally in the middle of the street.
I would like to emphasize that these weren’t really white-out conditions. It was like, softly snowing, and the snow was mostly melting the second it hit the ground. No ice at all. There were no more buses in sight and a bunch of people at the first bus stop we came to, so we walked on, calling our respective homes. We saw one bus with actual passengers, packed to the gills, on our entire walk from before 10th and Alma to Broadway and MacDonald where we stopped for pizza and eventually caught a running bus.
I am going to tell this story forever. Seriously, the bus driver was like your mom freaking out because she’s going down a really steep hill that is sheer ice. But it was a slight incline, not all that icy, and also SHE IS A PROFESSIONAL BUS DRIVER. This is ridiculous. I don’t have a lot of problems with the Vancouver transit system, besides its crazed refusal to have rapid transit that covers the bulk of the actual city of Vancouver, and instead have two rail lines that run parallel to each other, but this? Is ridiculous.
5 Responses to “The quintessential Vancouver snow story”
Paul on 21 Jan 2007 at 1:35 pm #
They’re funny that way; when I lived in Victoria, we had about an inch of snow for one day, and they completely re-jigged most of the routes in order to deal with roads that were anything but completely flat. Accidents everywhere. And Victoria, right at the south tip of the island, is pretty flat. It was the most surreal thing I’d ever seen–it was like everyone had just arrived from Arizona or something, having never in their lives seen a flake of snow.
Kevan on 21 Jan 2007 at 5:33 pm #
You definitely should have stepped up in those boots, hands on your hips and said, “I’ll handle this, I’m from Ontario!” and then shown them your badassed wonder woman gold cuffs and driven that bus until you needed to get off. Or something similar.
Kevan on 21 Jan 2007 at 5:53 pm #
Although, perhaps saying “Calgary” instead of “Ontario” would have been a bit more effective.
Sara on 25 Jan 2007 at 7:58 pm #
i have been hearing this from my seattle relatives too…that is fucking INSANE, you better get some kind of refund. like WHAT THE HELL.
brenda on 29 Jan 2007 at 12:47 am #
Paul: Yeah, that’s basically what it’s been like ALL winter; no one knows how to drive, no one owns shovels, there’s no snow plows.
Kev: Sandra Bullock in Speed styles. That would’ve shown her.
Sara: It was the UBC bus so I think basically everyone had UPasses, so it’s not like we could be like “I WANT MY MONEY BACK,” but it is totally ridiculous, and I would have been incensed if I’d like, seriously paid for this particular bus ride, or was buying a pass on a monthly basis. But it was still totally fucking ridiculous.