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Winter travel is on my mind because in Alberta Canada we live in an area where we’re pretty much vulnerable to how much we can control in the winter time when it comes to weather. -32 degrees Celsius (-25 Fahrenheit) is a reality for us up here and could be a daily occurrence for long stretches at this time of year.
With blizzards and cold weather, road conditions, along with tires and conditions of vehicles (although many times it doesn’t matter what type of vehicle you have) it seems like choice is taken from us at times (don’t get me wrong though, the ultimate choice to live here is ours).
There are times throughout the winter where we literally are not able to travel because it’s too dangerous, highways are shut down or we simply don’t want to leave the house. At times this makes it difficult to run a business, make it to work, or take the kids to school.
The reality of living in an area like this is, appointments will be canceled, people will be disappointed and going from A to B isn’t always the best choice. This makes it difficult for me because I grew up in an environment where nothing else mattered but the end results. All that mattered was if you were safe or out, weather you got a hit or didn’t, weather you made the team or had to find somewhere else to go. Your end stats (simply numbers) for the most part determined what kind of season you had or how well you played (we call it the law of average in baseball, everything seems to even out depending on how good you are).
With that mindset I struggle with making a better choice. The last thing I want to do is cancel an appointment of any kind, because in my mind all that matters is whether or not you showed up, no other outside circumstances. Unfortunately, recently I had to cancel a class and a presentation which was incredibly difficult to do. People are depending on you, people are expecting you and above all else you made a commitment to do something or be somewhere.
As much as this is a learning experience for me, I hope maybe you can learn something from this too. Road reports suggested staying off the road; shortly after I was supposed to leave they closed the highway North of me due to an accident, South (the direction I was going) had similar reviews of staying off with little to no visibility in certain areas.
I think we can all understand in this area (at least to an extent), it’s not worth the risk by forcing yourself to travel if the situation isn’t right.
