Bill's Blog

From the Frozen Tundra

Tenth Avenue Slick with Ice and Snow

The beautiful Lucy and Johanna have kept us in the frozen tundra long enough. We dearly love them, but the cabin fever has hit us hard. If you have never lived in the far north, you may not understand the concept of cabin fever. It is a mental disorder that comes from being indoors all the time. For folks from the far, far north it is compounded by the lack of sunlight. Luckily, after the first of the year, there are some sunny days here, even when it is extremely cold. How cold does it get? Well, the last three nights have had low temperatures of -20f, about -30c. Yesterday, the high temperature was -9f, -22c. Such cold, drives me crazy !!There has been a lot of snow too. It does not bother me as much as the cold, but still it is a nuisance. There is more than a foot on the ground. The mounds produced by snowplows at the side of the road are called snow banks. They are two to four feet high. When I was a teen-ager, we would try to put our cars into spins - knowing full well that the worst thing that could happen was that we would have to push the car out of the snow bank. Of course, this is nothing compared to the snows in northern Michigan or the winters of the 1930’s. Still, I have to question my sanity, because I do not have to be here.

There is a happy side to all this talk of the cold and snow.
We have bought our tickets for South America.
That is right, we will be on our way in two weeks.

We are very pleased that soon we will be able to see all of our friends in Argentina and Chile. We have a general plan for our trip, but nothing is written in stone. Here is what we are thinking about doing:

• We will be prepared to travel by bus and plane, but we would prefer to use a car. Our first priority will be to see if we can borrow or rent a car from a friend in Buenos Aires.
• We will visit Chile for at least one month. We will start in Santiago. We hope to visit our friends, the Miranda family, who live just outside of Santiago. Then we will head south. We will pass through many cities and fishing villages. We hope to visit Francisco and Ida in Concepcion. Betty hiked the Inca trail with Francisco in 2002. I love the fishing villages and small towns all the way to Chiloe.
• We will cross the Andes and enter Argentina again. Betty would like to see the glaciers in southern Patagonia. We will see them and more. Thank god, it will be summer in Argentina. Then we will head north to visit friends in Nechochea and Mar del Plata.
• We hope to find a furnished apartment to rent in Buenos Aires. We will be there two to three months. We will be back with our friends in the English Group and the Talk-Time clubs. We will be dancing the Tango again. Jeeze, we are happy just thinking about it.

For sure, we will need some help finding a car. We also may need some help finding an apartment. So, if you live in that part of the world, think a bit about this for us. If you come up with some ideas, write us.

You can look forward to our first report from the south in three weeks

Running Park

Posted by bill at January 17, 2009 09:51 AM