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Tag Archives: puddul shift

Yaris’ first snow

I took my random day off again in January again.  Last year, I went to the beach with the dogs.  One of the reasons I tend to take my random day off in January is that I’ve really wanted to take the dogs up to the mountains to see their reaction to their first time seeing snow.  It’s just…never worked out.  Either it was too hot and there was no snow, or no snow when I happened to be able to take a day off, or my day off had to be dedicated to something else other than taking the dogs somewhere fun.  Anyway, this year it finally all worked out.

I ended up taking the dogs up to Big Bear because 1) I wanted to see how they’d react to snow as neither Yaris nor Horse have seen snow before and 2) I wanted to drive mountain roads.  I’ve always enjoyed driving mountain roads.  And having a Subaru, the likelihood of me needing to drive with chains is much lower.  Driving with chains isn’t nearly as fun.  It’s loud and if you don’t want to melt your tires, it’s slow.

So, here’s Yaris modeling in the snow.  Because she thinks she’s a model.

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What a butt.  But anyway, it’s another one of those photos of Yaris that I find soothing and calming.  I do find it funny how icicles were forming on her belly fur (I dried her off before we headed back down the mountain so she wouldn’t have a soggy belly).

As for her reaction, there wasn’t much of one.  I kept pointing at snow piles and she was all, “yes, it’s white over there and it makes my paws cold.”  It was hard to find an area where I could let her off leash and play in a big pile of snow though.  The picnic area I had intended to go to was too full with families with small children.  The pile she’s on here is actually just edge portion of a giant mound a snow plow pushed to the side of the parking lot.  After I kept pointing at it, she finally went up a few times to sniff around.  But she didn’t seem to really care that there was snow on the ground.

Horse didn’t care much for the snow either.  He just made a lot of yellow snow.  Because he’s a horse.  Also, he’s not a very good model, so I don’t have any pictures of him modeling in the snow.  Here’s one of him walking with Yaris downtown though.

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I think the dogs had fun.  Horse was exhausted by the time we left.  He slept all the way home.  Lazy.

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Maybe this isn’t the car for you…

This was originally an aside from the life-crisis post, but it ended up being longer than I thought.  So here’s the story about that young guy in the car who inspired my idea about random fraction life crises.

My sister, bil, and I were on surface streets and the streets were relatively full. Every time we’d get stopped at a light, the dude would rev his engine. And when the light changed, he wouldn’t immediately move forward and he would rev like he was going to peel out and speed off. Except…he wouldn’t.

He would rev and rev and let the space between him and the next car lengthen. And then…he would start driving forward fairly slowly. It wouldn’t be a crawl, but his start would be slower than mine and I try to start smoothly from a stop instead of just stomping on the gas. It was really strange to see that.

What was even stranger was that he would start building speed and would have room to speed up even more, but then he would suddenly change lanes so that he would be behind a slower car. He would then brake and look all annoyed (it was a convertible and the top was down).

My sister, bil, and I discussed this and I think the consensus was that the guy is intimidated by his car. He doesn’t actually know how to drive it. The way the car was moving made me believe that it had a manual transmission, so we think that this guy isn’t that comfortable driving stick.  He would rev and rev to make sure everyone knew he had an expensive fast car…and then make himself look like an idiot because he would drive pretty slowly for all that build up.

On top of that, the moment he started getting too fast for his comfort (which would have been like 40mph and the speed limit for that section of road was 50mph), he would change lanes so that he was behind a slower car so it would seem like other people were preventing him from going faster. I guess it would have worked better if he would change lanes and try and make a turn or something. But he would change lanes when there was a huge gap between him and the next car and it would be a straight section without any lanes for turning.

Not sure if I can roll my eyes any harder.