Friday, January 21, 2011

You Call this SNOW? This is NOTHING!


Okay, I've complained a lot about the weather this winter here on Long Island and with today's additional sloppy, wet 3" of white stuff on the ground, this is a perfect day to post this entry about Travis Hamonic growing up in "Winterpeg."


It was a loss. It’s hard to talk to them when they lose. So I walked over to young Travis Hamonic while he was undressing and decided to ask him something different. Something that someone on Twitter had suggested I ask him. I asked about: “Winterpeg.”

Travis closed his eyes momentarily and smiled. “So how do our Long Island winters compare?” I asked him.

“They don’t really for the most part. In Winnepeg they got a snowstorm like the one we got at Christmas in October.“ and he laughed. Our Long Island winters pale in comparison to what Travis is used to. “You know growing up, there are a lot of memories when I was younger where I’d wear my hockey bag as a back pack. And my hockey sticks across the handlebars of my Ski-doo. We would Ski-doo up to 45 minutes up to a game. That was enjoyable Me and my buddies would all Ski-doo to our games.”

If that wasn’t enough, he would be able to skate to the local rink. “I have a lot of memories of me putting my skates on literally skating to the rink down the road. 15 minute skate instead of walking. From my door all the way to the rink, skate there for an hour and a half and skate all the way home. The roads were THAT icy.”

So the snow that we have which basically shut down so many businesses is nothing to Travis Hamonic. “No, this is nothing. I love to see the snow. I have a truck so I’m enjoying the snow. I love it.”

We, here on LI have no idea. We get six inches of snow and everything stops. Where Travis grew up, they learn to deal with it.

“In Winnipeg everyone is very winterized. They got the big trucks and the big SUVS for the most part. I grew up in a town of about 700 people, so there is one grader to plow all the roads so … a lot of times we had the plows in front of the quads and our own trucks and we’d kind of plow it ourselves.”

Hamonic and his siblings, he’s the youngest of four, have fond memories of winters and the friends that helped pass them. But there was one winter he remembers that was worse than most. “I remember we had a really bad flood in ‘97. It was the flood of the century. And I remember the amount of snow we had that year was ridiculous. I remember the cars were covered completely, peoples’ doors were buried in.”

Yikes! That’s a lot of snow! Knowing one of our other winter problems is loss of power, I didn’t know if the Great White North was better prepared for power outages.

“Power? Yeah, that happened on a regular basis. A dog could take a pee on a telephone pole and we’d lose power.” Okay, that made me crack up.

But it wasn’t all bad.

“No, we had snow mobiles, quads, ice shacks. I smile thinking about those days of my life. A lot of fun growing up.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

What a nice profile piece. But in our defense, we aren't equipped for, nor do we expect snow, like they have in Canada and parts of the Northern US. If I got a Christmas type blizzard in October, I'd move. :-)

He sounds like a nice kid who's learning the ropes here. I wish him luck.