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No such thing as climate change? Pffft.
Feb. 7th, 2008 03:27 pmSo that was a wee bit surreal.
Anyone who's been paying attention to Lower-Mainland news lately knows that there's been warnings issued twice in a week over at UBC - someone's been threatening to do something, although no one's saying anything about who or what.
SFU, on the other hand, has been quiet... Until last night. See, it's been snowing lately. No big surprise, it being winter and the campus being on a mountain and all (small mountain, yes, but it still qualifies for the moniker). We had a couple of days cancelled last week due to snow. Whatever. Things were back to running smoothly, and there was some more snow off and on, but people were dealing with it and things were okay.
Except yesterday, when it started to snow in the wee hours of the morning, it didn't stop. Just kept falling. Now, this was okay - it didn't really start to stick until about 1 or 2 in the afternoon. By 3:30, the buses were no longer making trips up or down the mountain. This was pretty crappy for me, as I had class at 3:30 and rely on transit, but I do know people with vehicles, so it would've been okay... Had they actually told us that transit service was cancelled before, y'know, 4:30, so I knew to make other arrangements.
So I come back to the common room from class at around 4:45, to find a room full of people who are effectively stranded. Oh. Well.
We kinda hung around, got hot chocolate, twiddled our thumbs for a while. I called Travis to come and rescue me in his truck ("Help me, Travis-Wan Kenobi! You're my only hope!"), but he was in the middle of hiking down the mountain back to his place and would be a while. That was okay. More hanging about - and then we hear security henchlings bellowing that the roads were all closed due to accidents and suchlike.
Well, this was just fine and dandy.
I called Trav to cancel the rescuing, and we all hunkered back down in the common room. Some folk excursioned out to the pub - I did not, correctly foreseeing that the place would be packed and no one would get in. Instead, went over to Renaissance to grab a bite to eat - kudos to those folks, at least. They seemed to be the only coffee/food-place on campus that knew what they were doing, and could keep the huge lines moving.
Walking up to get my foods was really weird, though. The steps leading to Cornerstone were all snowed over, with little paths carved through where folk had ventured before me - and it was dark, but the sky was white - actually, everything was kind of white, couldn't see any other sort of colour at all - and the snow was still falling like a bastard, and there were snowdrifts piled taller than me. I have not seen such a sight in fifteen years, since we left New Brunswick.
I was fully prepared to stay the night - sneak into CSIL using one of the guys' access cards so's I could study for the midterm I had today and use the sweet-sweet interwebs, go back and sleep in the common room, etc - but Travis ended up showing up sometime around eight or eight-thirty. Maybe before that, I forget. Anyways, he'd ended up getting back to his place and driving back up even though I told him not to bother, and had much fun sitting in the giant traffic lines and driving over a sidewalk where no mere car could venture. He fetched me and a couple of friend-folk, and we all piled into the truck and went back down.
Holy cow the amount of abandoned cars and spun out cars and stuck on median cars! And a minivan stuck on the median, too. It was funny.
Security, it turned out, was kinda lying. The road wasn't closed at all - there were just too many stupid people driving around in stupid summer tires (WHEN THEY GO TO SCHOOL ON A MOUNTAIN IN WINTER) getting stuck. A couple of accidents, yeah, but it definitely wasn't 'extreme' driving conditions like they were saying. And it was slow going, but that was to be expected. Gaglardi was impassable because of traffic, but going down the Hastings side wasn't bad.
So I just ended up staying over at his place rather than try and negotiate my way back to Surrey. I've had enough problems with the damn buses out here when it starts snowing to try.
And made it up with lots of time to spare for my midterm this morning! Which only took me about forty minutes to write when we were given two hours. Sigh.
Anyone who's been paying attention to Lower-Mainland news lately knows that there's been warnings issued twice in a week over at UBC - someone's been threatening to do something, although no one's saying anything about who or what.
SFU, on the other hand, has been quiet... Until last night. See, it's been snowing lately. No big surprise, it being winter and the campus being on a mountain and all (small mountain, yes, but it still qualifies for the moniker). We had a couple of days cancelled last week due to snow. Whatever. Things were back to running smoothly, and there was some more snow off and on, but people were dealing with it and things were okay.
Except yesterday, when it started to snow in the wee hours of the morning, it didn't stop. Just kept falling. Now, this was okay - it didn't really start to stick until about 1 or 2 in the afternoon. By 3:30, the buses were no longer making trips up or down the mountain. This was pretty crappy for me, as I had class at 3:30 and rely on transit, but I do know people with vehicles, so it would've been okay... Had they actually told us that transit service was cancelled before, y'know, 4:30, so I knew to make other arrangements.
So I come back to the common room from class at around 4:45, to find a room full of people who are effectively stranded. Oh. Well.
We kinda hung around, got hot chocolate, twiddled our thumbs for a while. I called Travis to come and rescue me in his truck ("Help me, Travis-Wan Kenobi! You're my only hope!"), but he was in the middle of hiking down the mountain back to his place and would be a while. That was okay. More hanging about - and then we hear security henchlings bellowing that the roads were all closed due to accidents and suchlike.
Well, this was just fine and dandy.
I called Trav to cancel the rescuing, and we all hunkered back down in the common room. Some folk excursioned out to the pub - I did not, correctly foreseeing that the place would be packed and no one would get in. Instead, went over to Renaissance to grab a bite to eat - kudos to those folks, at least. They seemed to be the only coffee/food-place on campus that knew what they were doing, and could keep the huge lines moving.
Walking up to get my foods was really weird, though. The steps leading to Cornerstone were all snowed over, with little paths carved through where folk had ventured before me - and it was dark, but the sky was white - actually, everything was kind of white, couldn't see any other sort of colour at all - and the snow was still falling like a bastard, and there were snowdrifts piled taller than me. I have not seen such a sight in fifteen years, since we left New Brunswick.
I was fully prepared to stay the night - sneak into CSIL using one of the guys' access cards so's I could study for the midterm I had today and use the sweet-sweet interwebs, go back and sleep in the common room, etc - but Travis ended up showing up sometime around eight or eight-thirty. Maybe before that, I forget. Anyways, he'd ended up getting back to his place and driving back up even though I told him not to bother, and had much fun sitting in the giant traffic lines and driving over a sidewalk where no mere car could venture. He fetched me and a couple of friend-folk, and we all piled into the truck and went back down.
Holy cow the amount of abandoned cars and spun out cars and stuck on median cars! And a minivan stuck on the median, too. It was funny.
Security, it turned out, was kinda lying. The road wasn't closed at all - there were just too many stupid people driving around in stupid summer tires (WHEN THEY GO TO SCHOOL ON A MOUNTAIN IN WINTER) getting stuck. A couple of accidents, yeah, but it definitely wasn't 'extreme' driving conditions like they were saying. And it was slow going, but that was to be expected. Gaglardi was impassable because of traffic, but going down the Hastings side wasn't bad.
So I just ended up staying over at his place rather than try and negotiate my way back to Surrey. I've had enough problems with the damn buses out here when it starts snowing to try.
And made it up with lots of time to spare for my midterm this morning! Which only took me about forty minutes to write when we were given two hours. Sigh.
