It wasn’t just Snowmaggedon, I also prepared for Y2K.
I bought 400 cans of chickpeas, some Gatorade and a shotgun. (A generator proved too expensive for my budget.)
And so, with the worst winter storm in history threatening Toronto the other day, I made preparations to protect my Rachelle and Heidi pack from the winter cataclysm that loomed. I did this by purchasing three dogs (from the Humane Society) to supplement Heidi– our Miniature Dachshund– to serve as sled dogs.
My Team, named The Abominable Snowmilators:
Heidi:
Strengths: Very strong and very stubborn
Weaknesses: Paws get sore and susceptible to cold
Hanzel:
Strengths: Likes spaghetti
Weaknesses: Chases tail
Liberty (named after Egyptian revolution):
Strengths: —-
Weaknesses: Turns out to be a bit of a princess
Bullet:
Strengths: Unflappable (not at all scared of streetcars)
Weaknesses: Old, slow and not bright (possibly deaf)
As I am an idea man and Rachelle and I are trying to buy a house in a market we can’t afford, I thought that I could also use my team of sled dogs to make some money, serving as a kind of urban taxi for people having a hard time making it back and forth to their local bars. Using a padded suitcase with a greased bottom, I did a trial run in the tennis courts at nearby Jimmy Simpson Park.
This experiment didn’t work out as well as I had hoped. It turns out that many of the schools in the Toronto region had closed down in anticipation of the Snowpocalypse. This resulted in a kind of a Lord of the Flies scenario whereupon I was pelted with snow (and ice!) balls from a group of children who had secured the high ground atop a snow mound created by the ice rink’s Zamboni.
Things were made worse when Josh– the leader of the attack group—pushed his body up against the fenced door that served as the only entry or exit point to the tennis court, trapping my team and I within. Fortunately, I guess, the dogs saw the aggressive volley of snowballs as a kind of anarchic game of fetch and appeared to be having fun, while I used my body to shield them from the onslaught of snowballs.
I fought back as gamely as I could, but I was unable to outmuscle Josh, the big, fucking prick who was blocking my escape.
At any rate, the predicted snowstorm only dusted Toronto, so it turned out that I didn’t need a dog sled team. Fortunately for now the animals seem happy eating the chickpeas I still have in storage, but Rachelle is quite upset about the damage I did to her suitcase and what she calls my “moronictude.”