so karl and i were driving back from toronto* on wednesday night (we were up there for him to get his visa renewed. friggin' INS) and it's lightly snowing in toronto-niagara falls.

we enter the US (with a detour through the border patrol building in lovely lewiston NY because i'm traveling with a furriner) and head towards buffalo-rochester-syracuse. and it starts snowing FOR REAL. hel-LO lake effect!

the drive from buffalo to syracuse is about 125 miles, right? should take, oh i dunno, 2.5 hours? sumthin like that? 3 hours later, we're only passing effing ROCHESTER because we've only been driving 30 mph (and even that was sometimes dangerously fast) because i can't see the road hardly AT ALL because of the driving snow and the build up on the roads. (and of course the radio is saying something about the roads being "a little slick." HA!)

at the point where we realize we're still in the greater rochester area and at this pace we're still 2 HOURS from syracuse (with 5 hours to go after that, best case scenario) and we've been in the car for 5 hours already, we finally decide that buffalo/rochester has kicked our front-wheel drive ass and decide to get a hotel.

of course, the MINUTE we pass rochester (i am NOT KIDDING. it's like there's a law that says the snow has to stop at the city limit), the snow all but stops, the road condition improves dramatically, and karl toys with the idea of driving the rest of the way to philly that night. since i've been doing all the driving up til this point, through all the effing snow, i warn him that i am DONE for the night, and that he'd have to drive the rest of it by himself. so he gives up too, and we finally get a room in some nowhere town outside syracuse. (baldwinsville, if you're playing along at home.)

next morning, i realize that not only did i forget to put my contacts in the night before,** but i've managed to leave them in toronto, and can't see, so i can't help him with the drive anyway.

but at least it's daylight.

point is: how on earth do people live up there? WTF?

*toronto was lovely. we stayed in the hotel victoria, went up the cn tower, toured casa loma, ate at pubs, met friendly canadians and friendly irishmen, wandered the underground mall thingy, and tried to avoid the freezing rain.

**i do orthokeratology, a non-surgical way of improving eyesight. i wear special contacts at night (very similar to regular rigid gas-permeable lenses), and take them out during the day. some kind of ortho-k miracle happens whereby my vision is then 20/20 all day, as long as i wear the contacts every night. if i forget, i can also wear them during the day, like normal contacts. if, however, i miss a night, i wake up with blurry vision that get progressively worse as time passes. and because my vision degrades slowly, passing through 20/30, 20/40, 20/100, etc, i am unable to have glasses, because what prescription would i get? so if i lose my contacts (or leave them in toronto) i'm SOL wrt seeing anything.