UB Drifting

That's the river that is!

The pictures say it all.

So in 2 days I've run on the frozen river, dog sledded on the frozen river and watched as some blokes played in cars on the river, haven't seen the guys playing skittles but I'm told there is a tournament tomorrow.
These frozen rivers seem to be pretty social places. I bet they miss them when the water is flowing.
Silly me - when the river is flowing they sit, chat, picnic and drink - why would they miss the ice - unless you have a high performance car you like to send sideways?

Fire! Fire! Oh...just starting the car.

So we have a whole load of cars that get rugged up for the night in the car park. You can pay $50 a month to park in the heated underground car park or you can rug up your car with specially made duvets, many of which are camouflage, though who they are hiding them from I have no idea.

For the life me I couldn't see how it helped, it's -25 or lower for most of the night, even putting a duvet over your car, no matter how well fitted, was not going to trap enough heat in a cooling metal box to keep it warm enough to start in the morning was it?

Apparently it is effective to a certain extent, that and going down before breakfast to light up and kick a small paraffin burner under the car, walk away eat breakfast and when you come back an hour later all is toasty warm and good to go, at least that is what I was told. Never seen anyone do it, never seen the remains of a burner left on the ground - I was skeptical.

I was walking home from work tonight and as I approached one of the many building site entrances there was a powerful smell of cheap coal, I looked for the ger smoke stack and for other sources and could see nothing - nothing except a big old digger with a tarp covering it's engine casing, and smoke - smoke escaping from between the engine casing the tarp and the cab. There were 3 men in attendance and my camera was not within reach, so I have no proof but I swear they had lit a fire under the thing and were waiting for the diesel to melt enough to get the thing going.

So maybe the paraffin burner idea is not such a silly idea.

mine's bigger than yours

In a city where might is right, and your power and influence are judged by the size and shininess of your car. In a city where Range Rovers and Land Cruisers are the norm rather than the exception. In a city where the Hummer is becoming de rigeur we saw some thing surprising last week.

A stretch Hummer, no idea how you get that through these streets, the corners are too tight, the humps and holes likely to bottom it out even with its prodigious ground clearance.

Then believing we had just seen the biggest car in UB we turned a corner and...

Now that's what I'm talking about...a proper sized vehicle. What the picture doesn't show is the the four front wheels all of which turn and the huge dif. at the back suggesting it is somewhat more than 4 wheel drive.

I wonder how long before we see these on the school run.