This was probably the craziest transport I've done. Not because of the dog -- the passenger was just one sweet little beagle. But because of everything else.
First, I headed out the door at 8:30am with the intention of getting on the road by about 9am. I needed to brush off my car (it snowed last night) and I needed to pick it up a little bit. All of that was accomplished easy enough and after getting gas, I managed to get on the Thruway around 8:50am. Wonderful, right?
Well, right before exit 45 (I needed to get to exit 46), I suddenly thought "wait a second...shouldn't it be more like 10:50, instead of 9:50???" And then I realized I'd left an hour early. I stopped at the travel plaza and called the transport coordinator to confirm. Yep...sure enough...I'd left an hour early. D'oh! No biggie really though. I got a muffin and coffee at Tim Horton's (and could only think "there is no food in Canada!" -- long story there), bought a paper, and sat down to read for a little bit.
About 20 minutes later I looked up and out the window. It was snowing. And I don't mean flurries. I mean all out raging blizzard with high winds. I wasn't expecting that! I knew they were calling for occasional lake effect, but they weren't calling for much! I decided to get back on the road and get going, since I thought it would be a little slow-going.
Well...it was. I couldn't see a thing. It turned out that between the heavy snow falling and the wind, I was in white out conditions. Lovely. Luckily, I was close to exit 45, and some guy was nice enough to let me get in front of him (since everyone and their brother chose to get off there). I stopped on the side of the road and called David. He confirmed that it was a fairly small patch of heavy snow coming through and that there might be a couple smaller bands, but that was the worst. Sure enough, while talking to him, the snow lightened a lot and I decided to get back on the road and get to exit 46.
The roads were a bit slick and I was fighting the wind, but I made good time and by the time I GOT to exit 46, I was under blue skies (gotta love the weather around here!). I was 45 minutes early, so I spent some time listening to an awesome radio station (called "Fickle 93.3" because they play rock music from any period) and took some pictures of the area around me.
Finally, the driver before me showed up with Bea, a sweet little beagle. They pulled her out and she was shaking SO BAD. I was told she was shy, but she seemed fairly calm despite the shaking. They tried to walk her a little bit, but she didn't seem to want to do anything, so we put her in my car. After the door was shut and the heat put on, Bea stopped shaking, sniffed around the whole back seat, and then settled down, curled into a ball, and fell asleep.
The drive back was fairly uneventful. The wind was horrible -- it kept hitting my car and nearly knocking me off the road (I found out later that the winds were gusting at about 40mph!). We made good time despite that and pulled into the Liverpool exit's parking lot around 1:15pm. Amy, the woman who was meeting me, was running a bit behind thanks to an accident on the thruway which kept her at a standstill for a little while.
I tried to get Bea out of the car to go for a walk, but as soon as I opened the door, she started to shake. Instead, I opted to crawl into the backseat with her. Again, as soon as the door was shut and the car warmed up a bit, she calmed right down. Eventually, she crawled over to me and into my lap, gave me kisses, and curled up into a little ball next to me and slept some more. I finally figured out that she wasn't shy -- she was COLD...and quite likely scared of the intense winds. So instead of walking her, we spent some time just hanging out in the backseat, much like I did with Buddy.
And much like Buddy, she really wormed her way into my heart. She was such a little sweetheart! Amy finally showed up and we tried to get poor Bea out of the car. She did NOT want to go and resisted with all her might. I finally managed to pick her up and we immediately got her into Amy's warm car where she no doubt settled down once inside.
I was really sad to see her go. But, on the good side, she's with her forever family right now and they're so thrilled to have her. She has a beagle playmate and a cat playmate who she already seems to adore. It's nice knowing that little sweetie has a real home!
Pictures of Bea can be found here.
A few of my favourites:
To get an idea of the weather, check out the following pictures.
These two were taken about a half hour apart. The weather was basically the same between the two times (though it was slightly more cloudy in the first picture).
With wind:
Without wind:
Footstep in the snow:
Look...there's a face in there!
A few more pics can be found here.
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