As I was plugging in my car the other morning I looked up the line of cars all plugged in and realized that I hadn't noticed how weird that scene was. Once upon a time that scene would have had me shaking my head at the fact that the school and many other buildings have rails of outlets for plugging in cars.
Over the course of the day, I was noticing other things that used to bewilder me or annoy me when we first moved up here. The first was the fact that until well after 9:00 am in the morning it is still pitch black. I have to wait to ask my students what the weather is like, because they can't see if it's sunny or cloudy outside (they sure know the temperature though - COLD). I don't notice that too much anymore, I've just adapted. The next would be the condition of the roads. For some reason they don't plow down to the road up here. When we first moved here, we kept waiting for them to finish plowing the roads because they were leaving about an inch of snow on the road. In addition, in town, they leave about 2 or more inches of snow on the roads and all of the traffic pushes it around and makes it very lumpy and bumpy on the town roads. A consequence of all of the snow on the road is that it gets compacted at intersections and becomes ice. Ice is not good when you're trying to drive.
The ice and snow on the road led me to think about another thing I don't think about much and that is the web of cracks on my windshield. Actually, almost everyone in this town has at least one chip or crack in their windshield. Why, you may ask? Well, when you leave that much snow on the road, you have to find some way to add some grip. The answer they have come up with is to put tons of gravel on the roads. If you take tons of gravel and add lots of large trucks, you get flying gravel that smashes windshields on a regular basis. Our windshield was ruined just over a month after being replaced this year.
One thing I still notice however, is the bitter cold. I don't think I'll ever not notice that one.
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