The Last of Iowa

Winter has well and truly arrived in Iowa. Finally. We were getting a little worried that we might not see any decent winter weather before we left. It turns out our fears were unfounded.

The weather went from fall to winter virtually overnight. Twice we dragged ourselves out of our warm beds to go and play in the snow and throw sticks at the frozen streams. Our snowmen were of better quality than any we'd ever built before and the parks and pine trees are really beautiful covered in proper, thick snow.

Snowmen in Iowa

Living in sub-zero temperatures (Bec regularly walked to work in -13 degree Celsius temperatures) actually requires a lot of effort. Glenn had to scrape the ice from the windscreen of the car every day and only after the snow plow had been through could he actually go anywhere. Our hotel maintenance man had to shovel and salt the footpaths everyday and was often on the roof of the hotel in the snow trying to keep the gutters clear of ice.

Glenn scraping the ice off the car

Not only is living in sub-zero temperatures a lot of effort, it also comes with its own set of dangers. When the snow melts and refreezes again it becomes ice which is, of course, very slippery. Cars slide off the road everywhere and Bec witnessed two low-impact car collisions in an hour from her hotel window one particularly slippery morning before she went to work. Possibly she should have taken this a sign of things to come and stayed at home. Rather, she headed off to work only to do a very 'old lady' thing and slip and fall over on the ice in the middle of the road, the result of which was two sprained wrists and a broken tailbone (not to mention the mental trauma associated with the non-xray diagnosis of said broken backside). The following few weeks were fairly uncomfortable for Bec.

Despite the weather we've still managed to get out and about. We did a quick trip around the Bridges of Madison County and took ourselves to see some icehockey. Ice hockey is EXCELLENT!!!! It's fast, furious and completely violent. We got front row seats behind the plexiglass next to a family with two small children whose cheering repertoire alternated equally between 'LOSERS!!!' and 'You suck ref!!'. Good, wholesome family fun and much better than the football.

Ice hockey carnage

A Bridge of Madison County

We can't really say that we were sad to leave Iowa (not the least because the temperature in the taxi on the way to the airport was -11 Celsius). It's lovely during summer and fall, but we're just not tough enough to live there full-time.

Bring on the Bahamas!!!!!