WANNA GET LAID…
just crawl up a chicken’s ass and wait!

Sorry, I was stuck in traffic behind a pickup truck that had that as a bumper sticker. I haven’t seen an obscene bumper sticker like that in ages. Actually, one of our old cars had an obscene sticker. It said, “Watch my rear end, not hers!” There was once a married couple behind the car where one of them was laughing hard at it, while the other one didn’t seem quite as amused. My father can’t remember which of the two was the pissed one: the male or the female.

Anyway, today I made an attempt to go to Waterloo to meet with the rest of my fourth year design project group to get our project off the ground. However, due to a series of interesting circumstances, I had to turn around and go home.

Yesterday there was a large snow storm here that cancelled most of my plans yesterday. I was planning on taking my parents out to have dim sum some place north of the city, but the snow made things too treacherous, so we put it off. I’m not complaining though. As my priest said today, “well, we shouldn’t mind the snow; at least it’s not a tsunami”. Damn right. Anyway, the forecast for Sunday as I read ityesterday said it would be sunny and clear. Indeed, it is sunny and clear today. However, the road conditions didn’t necessarily match.

As of about midday, many of the streets were not yet cleared. The main roads still had large amounts of snow on the sides. Intersections were particularly slippery around the corners. Not safe. Understandably, everyone drove slow. I was a bit more optimistic about going to Waterloo though since the highways tended to be a lot clearer. Just from the volume of traffic alone, the roads were extremely likely to be wet instead of snowy since all the cars would’ve melted the way. I was right. As soon as I got on the 401, I remember thinking that the roads were predictably clear. Unfortunately, I didn’t anticipate other side effects of wet roads.

About midway through Toronto, at about Leslie St., the spray from other cars speeding along wet roads was blocking much of my view. The spray was dirty, and the sun was causing a great deal of glare through the dirty windshield. I tried to use the washer fluid but nothing was coming out, and the wipers were making my visibility worse. For a few minutes I was blind on the highway. I couldn’t see any of the lane markings. I ended up trying to follow a truck because it was large and easy to spot, and for a little while it worked. However, much to my disappointment the truck moved to another lane. At that point, the glare from the sun on the windshield and the glare from the wet road were making it damn near impossible to figure out whether I was still in my lane. I’m sure I seemed like a drunk driver or something. I decided to get off at the next exit, Bathurst, and slowly made my way to the nearest gas station. When I got out of the minivan to see the windshield from the outside, I was in shock. It was covered in a layer of dirty sludge making it so that I couldn’t see inside.

I bought a bottle of washer fluid, filled the washer fluid tank, and tested the wipers. Nothing was coming out of the left wiper. The right wiper was spitting out some fluid, but not nearly enough. I ended up throwing snow on the windshield just to clean things up. I learned that trick from my first bus driver on my trip to New York. After clearing things up, I thought I’d give the highway one more try, but a few more exits over I got splashed again and couldn’t see. At that point I decided it was just too dangerous for me to get to Waterloo. I got off at Keele (not far at all from Bathurst), parked at a Home Depot and made a call home.

I thank God for the fact that I’m safe. So much could have gone wrong. Sure, I missed the meeting, but if I decided to continue, I might not have been able to attend anything else at all.

Dramatic? Yes. Realistic? Absolutely.