January 10, 2010

Etten-Leur buys bath salts against frost

Filed under: Automobiles,Nature by Branko Collin @ 4:29 pm

The city of Etten-Leur in Noord-Brabant has purchased 18 tonnes of bath salts to sprinkle roads with, in an attempt to keep the roads from freezing.

Salt lowers the temperature at which water freezes. Municipalities and Rijkswaterstaat keep about 100,000 tonnes of coarse ‘strooizout’ (lit. sprinkling salt) ready to keep roads clear from snow and black ice at temperatures of about -10 degrees Celsius or higher. Because of this year’s wintry conditions, some municipalities have already run out of stock.

Etten-Leur’s bath salt stems from a batch condemned by its producers. Some of the salt already had perfume and colouring added. The city expects to not have to use its bath salts, as new shipments of regular road salt is expected to arrive this weekend. According to Radio Netherlands, “the coloured bath salts smell of lavender, green tea and mango.”

The minister of internal affairs, Guusje ter Horst, has given the green light to produce more road salt than usual, despite environmental concerns. Strooizout is a very aggressive product that can rust cars faster, changing the selection of fauna along roads, leading to maritime plants growing inland.

(Photo by Flickr user sburke2478, some rights reserved)

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December 21, 2009

Crash course in snow management

Filed under: Automobiles,Aviation,General,Nature by Orangemaster @ 9:44 am

sneeuwpop

I just got back from walking down my street at 7 am in the dark (Happy Winter Solstice) with bikers negotiating the snow and cars taking the onramp to the motorway near my house at 30 km/h like well-behaved cars.

So far, buses are generally not running. I’m guessing they don’t sport winter tires or radials (aka four-season tires). Putting winter tires on your car once every 10 years is not practical or good value for money in the Netherlands. Yes, they are tons of accidents, literally piling up (pardon the pun). My neighbour goes skiing every year in Austria and just switched tires because they are mandatory in winter in Germany, and has to drive through there.

Trains are running minimally, so I bet the delays are really nasty. Many taxis won’t be driving around and so people trying to get to work are going to have to come up with dog sleds or walk. Speaking of trains, while I whine about not being able to woosh to Paris at a proper speed, the famous Eurostar train that runs in the Chunnel between Britain and France has been cancelled for days now, never mind the people who were trapped in it Friday night.

And then there’s the airplanes. North American and European airports all have tons of delayed flights, as well as airports just closing shop all together like in Belgium, as seen on Dutch telly. Picture stranded passengers off to visit friends and family for Christmas, tired and sleeping on airport benches.

I still don’t understand why the Netherlands can plan for terrorist attacks that will probably never happen, but plan so little when it comes to serious snow, a more realistic situation. In real Northern countries like Norway and Canada, sure we’re having problems getting around too, but if we were to shut down the country for a bit of snow at just -1 Celsius, we might as well dismantle all Scandinavian countries, Russia, Canada and the Northern United States.

Granted, de-icing planes is international and trains can’t deal with autumn leaves properly (I still don’t understand why), but winter tires on buses, cars and taxis would have avoided many problems so far, methinks.

Again, we really seem to stink at planning ahead realistically. I’m loving all this snow, but then I have a home office. This was the view outside my window yesterday. And just as I finished writing this, it started snowing again.

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January 13, 2009

Ice skates totally sold out

Filed under: General,Sports by Orangemaster @ 4:30 pm
Skates

It was bound to happen. People have been frantically trying to score new or second-hand skates for days, but alas, ice skates are totally sold out in the Netherlands, according to skate manufacturer Viking in Almere. On Monday Viking said it sold 75,000 pairs of skates, almost selling everything it had in stock.

The last two weeks were extremely busy days at Viking. Even on Monday, when the thaw set it, they were still selling skates. The buzz is that sometime around Thursday it is going to freeze again and we can all go out skating. I do hope so because I had a lot of fun skating on the canal. The picture above depicts my *ahem* custom-made French Canadian figure skates, which cost a bundle back when I was training at 5:30 am in the morning three times a week. Yes, I fell once already, thank you. However, if you want to buy Viking skates, you’ll have to wait until summer when they will make more.

Even finding a place to get my skates sharpened was not easy, but thanks to Twitter, I found a bike shop down the street that sharpens skates.

In the meantime, there’s always that huge Indoor skating rink they opened in Enschede.

(Link: z24.nl, Photo: Jeroen)

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January 7, 2009

Winter fever Dutch style and time off

Filed under: General,Sports by Orangemaster @ 3:10 pm
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Winter seems to be here to stay this year in the Netherlands, which means that canals and ponds stay frozen with or without the presence of snow, birds need to be fed bread so I keep hearing from bird lovers, and the country has skating fever. A business colleague proudly told everyone on a mailing list that she had tailored her work schedule around skating until it lasts. It’s safe to assume that employees are calling in sick as well and are on some frozen pond somewhere getting it out of their system.

As for myself, I just drove through Amstelveen and Oude Kerk aan de Amstel and saw tons of kids skating, like some modern Dutch winter postcard and spotted a place to sharpen my figure skates, should I join the party this weekend.

Tomorrow, the entire Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs gets a half day off to go skating. I asked the approachable and twittering Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs, Maxime Verhagen on Twitter if he plans on going skating, but he keeps telling us about meetings in Paleis Noordeinde where the Queen works.

The not so nice side to this story is that school children in the South of the country where the temperatures are lower and the ice is safer cannot just take time off to go skating because then the schools cannot meet their obligatory 1,040 hours of teaching lessons. What about the kids in the North of the country I just saw?

However, if the Elfstedentocht (The Eleven-cities Tour) is a reality this year, then they will be given time off to go and watch. It only happens every ten year or so and if not, they’ll all call in sick too I bet.

And then half the country will be unavailable, out of the office, sick, and just plain busy.

Last year we talked about a man who brought a piece of his toe to his Elfstedentocht reunion.

(Link: elsevier.nl, Photo: tvglorie)

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