Oops!

After getting dropped off at the carpool meeting point after work, I noticed an extension cord lying on the ground in front of my car. I thought I should move it out of the way so I don't run over it. Then I noticed that my car was plugged into it.

In the morning I had unplugged the extension cord from the outlet, but I must not have unplugged the car from the cord. So I must have driven all the way to the carpool meeting point (about a 5-minute drive away) with that loooong extension cord sticking out behind my car. And in the afternoon, the block heater timer was nowhere to be seen. I'd assume it came off somewhere during the drive, rather than being stolen, because the prongs of the extension cord were a bit bent. The timer probably would've protected the prongs.

I tested the cord and it still works. So that's a bit of good news.

Ice on the road

To get out of my little neighbourhood, there's just one road I can take, but I can go in either direction on it. This isn't a very major road--no bus route or anything--so the city doesn't clear the snow. Last week, I noticed something odd about it: at both ends, one driving lane is basically clear, and the other is covered in bumpy ice. (And of course, the parking lanes are snowy and icy.) In both cases, the lane for cars entering the neighbourhood is clear, and the lane for people leaving is icy. (After driving a short distance into the neighbourhood, you'll find that all of the lanes are covered in ice, but now I'm getting off topic.)

I can only think of one explanation: people drive on the entering lane with warmer tires. Would that make this much difference? Does anyone have a different explanation?

Unpredictable construction

This month, a somewhat major road near my house (144 Avenue) is under construction. I use a 2-km section of this road every day to get to work and a bunch of other places.

When I've seen road construction before, the road is typically either open (with less lanes) or closed for quite a while, or maybe turning is restricted at an intersection. But on 144 Ave, it's unpredictable. So far I think it's always been open in the morning. But on my way home, sometimes it's open with one or two lanes in each direction, and sometimes at least one direction is closed. Sometimes the direction I want to go is closed. Today I could drive down the first more-than-half of that road, but for the last longish block before I wanted to turn, the road was down to one lane. That lane went west. I was going east. So I had to take a detour.

Is this unpredictability becoming more common? Did I just miss it in the past?