Night in Newark

On my recent trip back from The Netherlands, a storm in Moncton led to my spending the night in Newark, New Jersey. For those who don't know, Newark is one of the poorer and crime-ravaged cities in the U.S. I was a little nervous about leaving the airport to go to a hotel, but fortunately I found a couple of friendly strangers to accompany me. We booked ourselves into a major chain hotel, so I thought that it would be no different than any other of these chain hotels in any other city. WRONG!

First, there was a football game going on in the hotel bar, which meant the lobby was overflowing with rowdy football fans. Dead center of the lobby was a homeless looking fellow who was just standing there alternating between mumbling to himself and shouting to anyone who might be listening. My room was on the 8th floor, though, so I figured it would be away from all the craziness and at least be quiet (ha!). My second sign of the classiness of the hotel was the elevators. The doors, both inside and out, looked like they had been kicked repeatedly. Awesome. Then I got to my room and saw the broken door handle.

I walked into my room, put my bags in the shower while I checked for bed bugs. (Compulsive beg bug checking behavior is not irrational if the threat is real!)

I noticed a pile of flyers that had been shoved under the door, which let me know that a) The room hadn't been cleaned in a while, and b) They let random people wander the halls of the hotel. Awesome.

There was also a pile of crayons on the floor leading me to wonder if the room had EVER been cleaned. The decor was not much better with chipped and dented furniture and a ripped up boxspring. I have stayed in random motels on the side of the highway that were better maintained than this place.

Fortunately, there were no signs of bed bugs. I still left my bags in the shower just to be sure.

My room just happened to be right next to the elevators. I think that the hotel had no insulation because not only could I hear every groan of the creaky old elevators going up and down, I could also hear every footstep in the hall, including the children that were running up and down shrieking and laughing. The final level of awesomeness was the positioning of my room in the corner of a sort of U shaped part of the building. This allowed for the winds to whip very loudly and scarily past my window. Also, the windows weren't sealed very well because I could feel the wind coming through them. All in all it was shaping up to be a long, loud, scary night. Fortunately, I was still on Amsterdam time, and after distracting myself with some phone calls, I was able to fall asleep fairly quickly and slept soundly the whole night!

Brain Freeze!

One of the things people warned me about before I moved to Sackville was the wind. I was worried about getting used to the cold and the snow, and everyone said that cold and snow alone would be no problem, that it would be the wind that would get me. So far there hasn't been much snow, although it has been very cold on a few days. And the wind is DEFINITELY the worst part of the weather here.

The two worst experiences I have had were Sunday and Tuesday of this week when I walked the dog in the morning. Both days I was reasonably bundled up with a toque on my head and things were going just fine until I turned into the wind or rounded a corner into the wind. Both times my face and head were blasted by an icy wind that felt exactly the same as having a brain freeze from drinking a slurpee too fast. Except it wouldn't go away until I was completely out of the wind. It was so painful!  In all my years of skiing and snowboarding, I have never felt anything like that. I guess when I am on a mountain on a cold and blistery day, I cover my whole face and have googles and stuff. I think I need to invest in a balaclava if I want to make it through this winter.

Fire Hydrant Signs?

One of the first oddities I noticed when I came to Sackville to look for a house was that all of the fire hydrants have little fire hydrant signs beside them.

I had never seen this before, and I am not the sharpest tool in the shed sometimes, so it took me a while to figure out the purpose of the sign. To my credit, it wasn't like I was sitting there trying to figure it out; I just noticed that it was different and made some casual semi-conscious assumptions.

At first I assumed that it was because New Brunswick is bilingual and it makes more sense to just have a picture than to have words in French and English.
Then I thought maybe it had something to do with some sort of disability - like braille or something. (I repeat, I am not the sharpest tool in the shed.)
But then I thought, WAIT, why would you need a picture of a fire hydrant when the fire hydrant is right there in plain sight? This made no sense.
That is when, to my horror, I realized that at some point the snow was going to be so high that all the fire hydrants would be buried!!!! The sign is there so that firefighters can find the hydrants when they are covered in snow.

I am not going to make it through this winter if the snow is higher than fire hydrants.