Edmonton

Sorry, people of Edmonton, but your city was a grey, grey place. Maybe in the spring it's all sunshine and brilliant flowers, and maybe summer is green and lush, but that November it was overcast skies, grey streets and a big grey hotel. Of course it didn't help that we were pretty eager to start the 'real' trip and put these sissy cities behind us.

Edmonton was also where we hit real snow. Not a Southwest blizzard - where three flakes sort of blow around in the air and everyone immediately slows down to 10mph and creeeeeeeeeeeeeeps along the streets stopping 20 feet in front of every stop light and then inching up just in case one of those flakes makes a suicidal dash for the pavement and causes potential slippage. No, this was real snow that started just early enough to melt on the still-warm tarmac and then freeze to ice while more snow fell through the night.

No panic though. We'd driven through plenty of snow in Germany and we had the Spider things! We were prepared darn it. We'd even practiced putting them on, although we hadn't actually driven on them out of fear the baked-dry surface of New Mexico wasn't ideal for these exotic items. Kirk headed out first thing in the morning and bolted them onto the special hub-caps while I coaxed the kids out of bed and into any two items of clothing that actually fit. Then we slowly headed out of the parking lot.

'It's a little loud.'

'WHAT?'

'IT'S A LITTLE LOUD.'

'OH. YEAH A BIT.'

'IS THERE ANYTHING WE CAN DO ABOUT THAT?'

'UM... WELL, WE COULD DRIVE OVER 35 MPH AND BREAK OFF ALL THE STUDDED ARMS.'

'OH. WELL, LET'S DO THAT RIGHT AWAY THEN AND GET IT OVER WITH.'

Anyone with any sense at all right now is wondering why the heck we hadn't gotten studded tires on the car in Montana or Edmonton. Yes, that would be the practical, the reasonable, the obvious thing to do except we were desert rats born and raised and hadn't ever heard of such a thing. So faced with the choice of caps-lock conversations all the way up to Alaska or death by skidding we quickly opted for death. The spider things were taken off before we left the town and didn't surface again. We were precarious, but quiet.