There are those among you who possess the hidden knowledge, the innermost secrets of raincoasterdom.
Yes. There are those among you who know that I have lived in Winterpeg. Indeed, one of the earliest pictures of raincoaster and her sistren shows them standing atop of a snowbank. This would not be remarkable, except that the snowbank was sufficiently tall that we were at the same height as the power lines. Verily, proximity to power has long since been superceeded by becoming the power itself.
Some additional perspective: Once I fell through the crust of snow on my shortcut home from school and nearly froze to death; I was in the middle of the field for several hours, in snow up to my armpits, unable to climb out, growing increasingly weak, and the sun had long since gone down, when the Avon Lady, a figure who looms in my memory and in legend as large and as benevolent as all the saints ever invented by those heathen Catholics, heard my plaintive yelps and rescued me.
Talk about generating brand loyalty; my mother doubled her orders from that day onward.
In any case, from The Winnipeg Sun via Fark comes sad news: it appears that the current occupants of Winterpeg are perhaps more Snowbirdian than Winterpeggian in inclination, and have winterfunked it.
They have cancelled the Polar Bear Swim; it’s too damn cold.
Now, you’d think, if you were as smart as you look, that they’d know, from the fact that it’s called a Polar Bear Swim, and the fact that it is held in Winnipeg, and the fact that it is, in fact and in actuality, held in DECEMBER, that it would be a mite frosty. Indeed, if you did figure thusly, you’d be a helluva lot smarter than the students and faculty at the University of Manitoba who set this up, then bailed, despite the handy proximity of several special-occasion hot tubs, trucked in for the event.
While the fact that the temperature onsite is estimated to be -32 Celsius lends some credibility to the idea that these people can, in fact, think, still it must be said that you’d figure anybody stupid/drunk enough to sign up for this gonad-shrivelling stunt must be stupid/drunk enough to go through with it.
Even without the chill factor I can see that they have no balls.
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Technorati me!
raincoaster 
Monsieur Metro
Regen=Coaster should go to Zuid Afrika – you go inside, because it’s so hot outside – from one decade to the next, you will not see snow – RC would be safe from snow-holes and she is not the sort of lady who would upset a charging lion or herd of wildebeest
The South Afrikans are canny folk – like Canadians, they (or most of them) speak Englisch after a fashion – in fact they are far more intelligent than Rooineks, few of whom have amassed enough brain power to speak the Language of Heaven’s People (the Zulus)
….. and for your Project to re-create the LongHorse through retrieval of DNA-strands, South Aficans know a lot about regenerating a lost but much-shot (an Afrikaans expression meaning “much-loved”) species, with their Quaggas
We’d like your views (with business plan & carbon-saving audit) as a Kapitalist on whether more profit is to be made out of LongHorses employed to give Children rides at your Tree Octopus Plantation or employed in your Pizza-Topping Factory
Tot siens
G E
I have heard much about South Africa, including the “armored vehicle with flamethrower” needed for a run to the corner store. It would be a lovely country, if it weren’t for the damn people, something which could be said about so many nations, my own included.
Up with Quaggas, down with flamethrowers.
And you don’t know me very well if you don’t think I could upset a charging lion or a herd of wildebeest. I have a knack for it; I could upset a tranquillized teddy bear.
Lol, this post was mighty funny. That picture rekindled (is that too warm a term?) memories of two Minnesotan winters, that I, a creature born and bred in the tropics, experienced not so long ago. I recall that the wind-chill went to -50 F one night, and a well-meaning friend called me at the office to advise that I had better have dinner at the vending machine and sleep in the office and abandon the idea of walking home in the cold ;).
That is a true friend. Every year Canada loses maybe a half dozen revellers who decide that sitting down on a snowbank for a quick nap is just the very thing to do. If it’s still snowing when they lie down, sometimes it takes a week to find the body.
I still have vivid memories of coming in from the cold and waiting five minutes for the moisture in my scarf to melt enough for me to peel it from my face. Otherwise, it’s like waxing, but with ice.
I didn’t know you’d lived in Winterpeg, RC. I was born there and, as if that wasn’t bad enough, spent a part of my childhood living 500 miles north of there in a dismal & depressing mining town called Thompson, which made Winnipeg seem almost tropical by comparison. I have vivid memories of my earlobes freezing during the ten minute walk to school … these days I’m much happier with +40º temps than -40º.
I, too, love roasting. I went on vacation to Manila and it was so hot even the locals were doing nothing more than lying in the shade and fanning themselves. Every now and again one would gaze up at me as I walked by and say, “It’s very hot, ma’am,” and I would chirp “Yes it is!” and keep walking.
I have never been to Thompson, just Brandon and Lake Manitoba, whose beaches will forever live in my memory as the platonic ideal of all that beaches should be.
A truly Canadian story: I lost a schoolmate when she was sucked up into a road snow blower.