Headed out to Eagle Ranch for their Christmas Party. I didn't bother bringing the glider as it was forecast to be windy from the wrong direction (NE). Boy was it ever! When I arrived the wind was picking up, and as the evening wore on it just got windier and windier.
As I was helping out in the house, the power went out, and we were trying to figure out how to finish cooking the food (using the BBQ outside, or the wood stove in the Barn, came up as options), but before we had to resort to desperate measures the power came back on (yay!). Meanwhile it was blowing about 80 kph outside, from the NE, trees coming down, and very cold (-10C I'm guessing).
Lots of people showed up despite the wind and cold, and the combined body heat of 50+ bodies in the lower Barn was enough to keep us toasty warm; that plus the wood stove roaring away. Kevin Ault and his band, Head over Heels, was set up upstairs and Jim had a portable heater blasting fire at them to keep warm. The rest of us managed to keep warm upstairs by dancing, dancing, and dancing some more. That was the only way to keep warm up there!
It had started to snow, but it was so windy it wasn't able to accumulate, so was difficult to realize how bad it was getting. It was only as I left, was driving back to Vancouver, and the wind dropped, that the snow started to accumulate and I got back just in time for snowstorm #1 of the season. Several inches of the white stuff had already fallen by the time I got back to the city, and the plows were nowhere to be seen (although it was 2:30am by now, and a Sunday morning).
But the party was a great success, lots of people, lots of music, and lots of catching up. Many people are headed south to various points over the winter, so the next I'll hear of many of them will be as a flight report I'm sure.
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