{"id":8336,"date":"2014-02-27T21:56:22","date_gmt":"2014-02-28T07:56:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.studionewmedia.com\/blog\/?p=8336"},"modified":"2014-02-27T23:02:07","modified_gmt":"2014-02-28T09:02:07","slug":"wet-and-messy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/2014\/02\/27\/wet-and-messy\/","title":{"rendered":"Wet and Messy"},"content":{"rendered":"

The warm weather has made all the unremoved snow in the streets melt and the vehicular traffic has churned it into a brown slurry.\u00c2\u00a0 The snowpack on the sidewalks are corny slush in the sun or slick ice-slides in the shade.\u00c2\u00a0 I’ll never understand the half-measures in this city.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s not like it has never snowed before.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s not like they don’t have front-end loaders and dump trucks.\u00c2\u00a0 They’ll clear the center turn lane and the inner traffic lanes of a four-lane highway, but leave mountainous piles of snow in the outer lanes.\u00c2\u00a0 I can understand just getting some lanes open\u00c2\u00a0immediately after a blizzard, but that’s where the work stops.\u00c2\u00a0 They don’t clear the remaining mess in subsequent days and it just keeps piling up.\u00c2\u00a0 When the temperatures drop next week, all that slush in the streets will harden up into an ankle-twisting egg-crate of ice.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Dropped by Taj Mahal in the Factory mall for the buffet lunch (1150-yen plus 130-yen to add a masala chai).\u00c2\u00a0 Today’s selections included a great keema (ground lamb curry)\u00c2\u00a0and aloo\u00c2\u00a0palak (Punjabi potato and spinach curry).\u00c2\u00a0 The aloo palak was outstanding!\u00c2\u00a0 After lunch, I\u00c2\u00a0took a look around the Mont Bell store and outlet.\u00c2\u00a0 There were some nice tactical tan Gore Tex ballcaps, but the 3L one had reflective logos and an unstructured brim, and the structured one was 2L with a mesh liner.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m not particularly fond of 2L, so I passed.\u00c2\u00a0 Again, they had softshell pants and pants with gusseted crotch construction, but those two attributes remain mutually exclusive.<\/p>\n

The walk from the Shiroishi subway station to Shuugakusou was treacherous as usual. Uphills were generally slushy, and downhills icy and off-camber.\u00c2\u00a0 Luckily(?), those enormous piles of snow left at the curbside prevented me from sliding out into the street.\u00c2\u00a0 Right in front of the family restaurant, I went sliding and spinning down the hill like Hanyu Yuzuru in tactical pants and a combat pack.\u00c2\u00a0 I stayed fully upright and didn’t\u00c2\u00a0fall and break my ass.\u00c2\u00a0 That was a medal performance.<\/p>\n

After all that work, I didn’t find anything I wanted.\u00c2\u00a0 The new snow*peak silicone cooking utensils were PRC.\u00c2\u00a0 They had the Helinox tactical chairs in black on closeout for less than US prices, which was amazing in itself, but under close examination the\u00c2\u00a0fabric portion of the chair was sourced and sewn in the PRC, and it was unclear how much of the rest was produced in a Korean facility by Helinox’s parent company, DAC.\u00c2\u00a0 I really wanted a chair: I’m tired of sitting on the floor.<\/p>\n

The return trip was a little easier with less acrobatics, but back near the FOB, the streets were even more messed up than when I left, with dislodged ice chunks floating in the slush and brown crap-water like icebergs.\u00c2\u00a0 When I crossed the street to go to the convenience store for a drink, a dude with fists balled up in the wrists of his gloves running like Roy doing his “I’m a gay robot” thing flew by me.\u00c2\u00a0 Really?\u00c2\u00a0 Is this how I have to move on the slippery ice and not fall down?\u00c2\u00a0 Guess I’ll have to experiment with that…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The warm weather has made all the unremoved snow in the streets melt and the vehicular traffic has churned it into a brown slurry.\u00c2\u00a0 The snowpack on the sidewalks are corny slush in the sun or slick ice-slides in the shade.\u00c2\u00a0 I’ll never understand the half-measures in this city.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s not like it has never […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[8,9,12,16,18],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paJYlx-2as","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8336"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8336"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8336\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8343,"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8336\/revisions\/8343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}