All things being equal

A February half term trip was easy, a combined sale with cheapest fares out of Dublin and the world is your oyster.
All things being equal... well within about £100 of each other , which would you be choosing ?

Hawaii?

Alaska?

Lisa's house?

  Yeah, I know, one would expect Alaska to be chilly at this time of year but seriously, Atco colder that Alaska??  could I have picked anywhere worse? - well actually yes......Boston !

To get to Alaska or Hawaii would mean going through Boston so actually I have picked the best option flying to Philly to see Lisa even if the dizzying heights of 2C on Tuesday is going to be the warmest it gets with 7-12cm of snow thats 4 1/2 inches

4 and a half inches of snow here and the country would grind to a halt, trains would be cancelled, airport delays, panic on the motorways, panic in the shops, panic on the news. Do they panic in the US? nope, they just shovel and plough their way out of it and carry on

Some cities have designated snow lanes, they ban parking beside the road, snowplow the white stuff off the road and onto the lanes at the side of the road- simples. Car parks are cleared by ploughing it into a couple of parking spaces at the edge of the car park, lines of snow ploughs 3 abreast clear the bigger roads and life carries on , The favourite vehicle to attach the plough to seems to be a cement mixer, in 10 years I have yet to find out why but a line of 3 cement mixers with ploughs attached isnt an unusual sight. Actually it is an unusual sight for me because American cement mixers are mounted backwards

Then there is the array of equipment for the common man, snow clearers, snow blowers, stuff you can push along, stuff you can ride, they love a good machine to clear the snow
  One year we were chatting to the pilot on the way out of the airport and he mentioned that the couple of flakes falling from the sky was going to be a massive snowstorm, he wasnt wrong, next morning 2 feet of snow greeted us in the hotel car park, Al was fascinated by the sudden appearance of the snow so we drove gingerly to Home Depot and bought him a snow shovel, he spent the next couple of days happily digging snow in the car park and Lisa's garden . It was 2006 and he was only 11 so I wont embarrass him by posting the photos of him and the snow shovelling so heres one I took out and about the same trip

Luggage
  A trip to somewhere cold needs altogether too much luggage, no way can I fit the coats, jumpers, gloves etc into hand luggage which leaves me at the mercy of the baggage handlers at 3 different airports, could be worse, Dublin only lose things, Brussels actually break them, I still have one of the 3 wheeled suitcases to prove it.
Looking back at the photos its 2010 since I last went anywhere snowy, Alaska in July is in the low 20s and only needs a jacket to keep warm in the chillier evenings so the weather is going to be a bit of a rude awakening.
    As I often try to explain to Lisa and others in the US, our climate here in the UK doesnt really need all that many changes of clothing, a couple of coats and a thick jumper or two for the coldest days and cropped trousers and sandles for the warmest days,, the rest of the time you can wear pretty much the same clothing all year round , give or take a cardigan and a brolly. Travelling to  more extremes has necessitated a whole wardrobe of clothes that have very little use at home, thick coats and gloves probably see 4 weeks use and shorts and swimsuits about the same..........no wonder all the wardrobes on American films are so big! Someone told me the other day that I have a small amount of wardrobe space "for a woman" I didnt point out that there is probably the same amount of clothes spread round the house as well,

I'm a bit wary about the flights I have had the tonsil issue again the last few days and dont really want my ears disturbed by changes in air pressure, lets hope alcohol is good at relaxing your eardrums and eustachian tubes, although I suspect the quantity required for that degree of relaxation is well beyond my "lightweight" status and even further beyond the point where it gives me heartburn!

Why is it I am such a bad weather magnet?