Poor weather not dodged

We were supposed to fly back to Japan on Tuesday, but there was a ground freeze at Pearson airport which delayed our flight to Minneapolis Saint-Paul where we were supposed to connect with a flight to Narita. Since flights were doing just fine leaving Minneapolis, there was no way we were catching our flight to Japan so we had to reschedule. The earliest we could have flown out was Friday, but that flight was going to be through JFK and the woman who rebooked us did not recommend that approach.

Now we're flying back Saturday through Detroit, which means that we have some time to hang out here some more. I got my haircut earlier today, which I meant to do and then ran out of time to do earlier. I figure getting a haircut in Japan would be an issue since I don't really know how to describe what kind of haircut I want in Japanese. I also got to check out some of the damage from the ice storm that hit just before we got here.

Trees doing telephone
pole impressions.

The trees all around the city seem to have taken a hit, but parts of my parents' neighbourhood were really bad. There's one street nearby where it looks like "there were telephone poles on both sides of the street, but someone just went down the street and chopped off all the tops" as daid describes it.

According to my parents, the neighbours on that street lost power for more than a day (my parents only lost power for 5 hours or so). That street had much larger trees than the ones on my parents' street, which is probably why the trees did not fare so well, but the power lines run underground so I'm not sure why it was so much worse for them.

The maple tree in my parents backyard took a beating, but it was pretty bushy before the ice storm, so it should hopefully be okay for the most part. 

None shall pass!
(Without ducking)

The entrance to the park was in pretty poor condition, as you can see. The one tree lying across the path in the front had a trunk that was probably about 30 cm in diameter, but it was snapped just like it was nothing.

The trees further from the road (behind the fallen tree in the image) fared better, but the fallen branches still made for a nice obstacle course if one wanted to go to the park.

Of course, we did want to go to the park.

Our reward for climbing over and under the fallen tree and limbs was a wonderful view of a frozen park that we had (almost) all to ourselves. Here, the trees were sheltered by the valley so many of them had escaped major damage (though the forest was impassable).

A winter wonderland!