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Alex Got Lost: Bad Weather Blues

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Alexander Leach, Editor

I hate this time of year.

I was probably born in the wrong country if I hated snow and the cold, but I didn’t exactly get a choice in the matter when I was born, along with a lot of other mandatory terms I would rather renegotiate. But my distaste for the snow is more a product of age than my love of warm temperature.

Snow is extra work any time you want to drive anywhere. It piles up, it needs to be shoveled, and it gets in the way – and city ploughs don’t have much they can do about blocking your driveway with a ridge of frozen snow. It also makes any emergency infinitely worse, by slowing you down.

This week’s council meeting focused on the Jeffrey-Olmstead road – a gravelly nightmare to drive, particularly in the winter. I don’t think many are going to object to it.

Whitewater’s road quality is paramount in a place dominated by rural roads and vast stretched of wood; I’d rather not get stranded out in the roads past Lapasse. For the people living there, it’s an enormous pain.

With COVID-19, we also need to make sure that everything else is in as good a repair it can be. Potential disasters are difficult to deal with when your ambulance is stuck in a pot hole, or driven off into the lake.

The repairs to the road will be a hot topic on February 10th, and while I’m not in the area, I can’t help but feel some strong agreement simply due to the general fear of broken, winter-complicated roads.

I’ve not gotten stuck out here yet, and I’m not planning to do so any time soon.

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