Wednesday, Snowy Wednesday

Remember when it snowed on Wednesday?

Oh that’s right, you probably don’t, because it didn’t.

Unless you happened to be in Edmonton with the Whitecaps and their travelling horde of fans.

Vancouver was in the Alberta capital for the first leg of their Canadian Championship series against FC Edmonton, but then this happened:

Clarke Field is green sometimes. The rest of the time it looks like this. Photo from Whitecaps FC.
Clarke Field is green sometimes. The rest of the time it looks like this. Photo from Whitecaps FC.

On May 6th. Months after winter has supposedly ended. That.

Now, I’ve been to Edmonton. Once. And really it wasn’t that bad.

Of course Chris/Lauren Pronger and Michael/Insert wife’s name here Nylander may tell you otherwise, but the city does have a certain je ne sais quoi about it. Like, for example, there was a really cute dog I saw running around rooting through the dumpsters behind the local Super 8 motel. In the snow.

Also the Hooters restaurant at West Edmonton Mall served up only a mildly bland if not woefully uninspired grilled cheese sandwich. I’d like to say that I wasn’t at the Hooters for the grilled cheese, but I was just a young lad, all of 10 years, and really, I was at that Hooters solely for that tragically tasteless sog-monster.

Nicolas Mezquida and Cristian Techera seen here kind of sort of making some snowball-type things. Photo from Whitecaps FC
Nicolas Mezquida and Cristian Techera seen here kind of sort of making some snowball-type things. Also pictured: a coffee cup. Photo from Whitecaps FC

But when you see pictures like these, in the middle of spring, one begins to recognize why the people in and around Edmonton chose to build a shopping centre of that size. “Outside” in Edmonton should be optional. It’s really only a matter of time until council passes a resolution to expand the mall over the city in its entirety. It will be kind of like that movie Bio-Dome, except when Pauly Shore enters the dome thinking it’s a mall, it actually will be a mall. Also, it will be covered with snow.

And for the record, I don’t expect a single one of you reading this to have seen that movie. The only thing worse than watching that movie is watching that movie while in Edmonton. Where it’s snowing outside. In May.

Russell Teibert built a snowman like a champ. Photo from Whitecaps FC
Russell Teibert built a happy snowman before being mauled by a nomadic Yeti. Photo from Whitecaps FC

In any case, the Whitecaps trip wasn’t entirely bad as they were able to return promptly to the west coast, where we are settling in for a nice run of twenty-degree weather. Which is more than I can say for the poor Price is Right contestant who recently won a trip to Edmonton, from Los Angeles.

Dear Price is Right – the point of a vacation is to go somewhere nicer than where you are from.

But you’ve got to give the lady credit. She’s already turned down the hotel stay and will instead be renting an RV in order to vacate Edmonton as quickly as possible after arriving. The girl’s got moxie. Maybe some of it will rub off on Edmonton.