USA adventures

It is snowing the whole weekend already. First we had a snowstorm that started on Friday and only stopped Saturday night, which left about 25 cm and today. Today - Sunday - another snow storm coming from the Great Lakes is expected to drop another 15 cm or so. Picture on the left is from yesterday (Saturday).
Tomorrow it is supposed to be very cold (-13C); there is going to be a lot of wind too so with the windchill it will be feeling below -20C easily.

To be prepared for this kind of weather you need a lot of tools. Americans love tools. Most of our neighbours - if not all - have snowblowers, something like a lawnmower but in stead of grass it sucks up snow and blows it 5 meters further. We of course do not have a snowblower. In stead we've asked our gardener to shovel snow for us. He has a big 4x4 truck with a snowplow and when it snows he is supposed to clean our driveway. We share the costs with the neighbour. Each time it snows I get $20 poorer. This weekend alone will costs us $40.
Tonight at around 6 pm it will stop snowing. Then I have to go out and do snowshoveling otherwise everything will freeze up and things will get very slippery.

Yesterday Giselle and I went to a shopping center in Hingham, which is about 10 miles a way and we took a drive on the highway. It is incredible how disciplined the drivers are here. People were driving about 70 km per hour. If this amount of snow would fall in The Netherlands traffic would be crippled in an hour or so. When a big snowstorm is expected in the weekend automatically all church or community services are cancelled. During weekdays school start later or is cancelled (when the storm is big).

Below a couple of other photos. If you're wondering who is the dude in the white Karate suit....that's me...I started 4 weeks ago. Two times a week for an hour. It is a lot fun, but not easy. There is a lot of coordination involved and that's not my strongest point. I am in a group with 4 other guys that started a little before me, so I am trying to catch up. Our teacher is a good guy. He is a second dan black belt and besides classic karate moves he also teaches us some pragmatic streetfighting tactics. Here is the link to my karate school www.cantonkarateclub.com
It is 3 minutes drive from our house, which is great.