During the past few years, it'd become tradition to head over to St. John's in late January for my friend Rosie's birthday. This year would be no different, even if it is now a bit odd how long I stay in Ontario into January, then need to rush across the island on the first weekend back in Newfoundland.

Mother Nature would throw a wrench into this year's plans though. Once I was back in NL, I became aware of the so-called Snowmageddon occurring in St. John's, but it wasn't until I talked to Rosie that I realized it wasn't just hacky Weather Network sensationalism.

I thought nothing of showing up somewhere where they'd called for a snow state of emergency when it had to do with snow, except Rosie emphasized to me that things were actually, truly fucked and that maybe I should heed the state of emergency warnings.

Amazingly, after a whopping eight days, the state of emergency was going to be lifted on the exact day I was set to arrive in the capital city.

I feel like any Corner Brooker or Yooper is looking at these photos and scoffing, saying, "big whoop, that's what it looks like in Corner Brook/Houghton every March."

And heck, after listening to that tired Newfoundland joke about Toronto needing to call in the military because of a snowstorm, I felt some smug satisfaction that St. John's needed help themselves and had to call in the military because of this Snowmageddon.

One of the problems here was that it all came at once. St. John's already had about 2.5-feet of standing snow from the holidays and into January, then came what is called a "bomb cyclone", which dropped nearly three feet of snow; 30 inches of which came in one 24-hour period.

In addition to this snow, there were also hurricane force wind gusts up to 134 km/hr (83 mi/hr), causing snow drifts in excess of 15 feet.

I still scoffed the way you do after you live in Corner Brook and plod through year after year, experiencing just the worst weather on Earth outside of Yakutsk Siberia. Rosie changed my tune though, showing me a video where she's leaving a friends gathering, opening the door decked out in winter gear and snowboard glasses, while legit hurricane winds blasted snow down the street and between the rowhouses she was departing. The snow was drifting and even in the lower spots, she went down to her hip as she trudged forward out into that mess to get back home.

I'm trying to find anything close on YouTube but I'm coming up short. Clearly she could have cashed in by licensing her footage to the global news outlets like The Washington Post or The Daily Mail, who covered said Snowmageddon.

It was good fun walking around, not only because of the opportunities for gawking at various drifts and tunnels, but also because it was such a nice day and a lot of cooped-up people were out and about, shaking off the cabin fever.

Now while I normally hate encountering other pedestrians in Newfoundland because you're expected to say hello, today it was something else because of the chaos caused by the roadside embankments and how cars couldn't see what was coming as they were tunneled along. Knowing how Isy hates harrowing driving situations, I texted her about what she was missing out on and she said it sounded like an absolute nightmare, lol.

Oh yeah, there was also dozens of dump trucks thrown into the mix for good measure. This was necessary because really, where was the snow going to go between these streets and the houses?

The City of St. John's even amended the recent by-law which prevented them from dumping snow into the harbour anymore, allowing them to do it for this one special time.

I contemplated how this would've went for me if I lived in St. John's. No, obviously not in terms of my house or anything, but how quickly would I have made it to the skatepark? How soon would I have it cleared? I thought back to when we got a 16-inch snowstorm and it took me nine hours to clear the park. So if it extrapolates 1:1, it would have taken me over 20 hours to clear Snowmageddon from whichever skatepark I'd choose if I lived in St. John's.

Speaking of fun things, some snowboarders took the opportunity presented by the clogged streets, to turn downtown's steep Holloway Street into an impromptu ski hill.

While walking around, I also took the time to finally pop into St. Bon's (St. Bonaventure's) Forum - which claims to be the eighth oldest ice hockey rink in the world.

Built in 1923, the St. Bon's Forum is up there with places like the Calumet Colosseum and Matthews Arena in Boston. Of course Windsor Arena used to be on this list, prior to that selfish clown Eddie Francis closing it to make up for his other gaffes.

I always put off going inside St. Bon's until I could rent the ice or play in some shinny game, but in yet another case of learning this lesson, it was a good thing I stopped here today.

While I figured they'd never tear down St. Bon's in the night since there really isn't enough ice available in St. John's, this rink did become threatened by the Roman Catholic Church scandal where as a result of sexual and physical abuse, the church in Newfoundland is being forced to sell off their properties - and part of the Basilica property is St. Bonaventure's and its arena!

Thankfully for old arena lovers, the arena management, the school management, and a basilica group, came together to bid over $3-million on the property and they've won it with plans to keep it as is (as long as the lawyers approve the sale).

There was an adult womens' pickup game going on, which is up there in terms of game type I'm going to feel awkward taking arena architecture pictures around. Especially in a place like St. Bon's where there's not even a seating area.

Of course this is also when my camera decided there wasn't enough light to focus, so it's all very good that St. Bon's should stick around. I hope to pop in on a future visit to St. John's.

It was time to get back to Rosie's though, where working the phones didn't produce the desired results of getting people together to go out. As it turns out, everyone had been to so many parties and get togethers because of work being cancelled, or needing to help people shovel, or just eradicating cabin fever; that now a bunch of people needed a break and some alone time inside.

Nevertheless, I was just about done my Hurricane 40 I acquired in Brewer Maine, so we were about to get after it regardless!

The first stop of the night was up in the Georgetown neighbourhood, over at the Georgetown Pub.

The Georgetown Pub is solid and sometimes there's even quite a few younger people there, as it's not only a building still open just for people playing the lottery machines.

For some reason, even though it was Rosie's birthday, she wanted my input and therefore we got to check out some of the more obscure dives of St. John's. In a province where cool dives hang on due to their sheer number, as well as the aforementioned lottery terminals, I figured St. John's had to have some good dives.

En route, as the cabbie weaved through roads that weren't two cars wide, I stopped thinking it was so silly that the state of emergency had only been lifted today.

Our next stop was The New Laurier Club, which no one knew when Rosie told them on the phone or at the Georgetown Pub, and I would later stump one of Isy's dive bar loving friends with it too.

The Laurier Lounge wasn't exactly bumping, but the inside was still great, especially when you consider the whole sprawling, roadhouse-style building on this big plot of land at LeMarchant & Hamilton Ave.

I can't find out much about the history of this building besides the fact that it used to be called the 301 Club and local punk/rock concerts happened in the basement while hard tickets hung out upstairs. The only other reference is from Michael Winter's real crime fiction novel "The Death of Donna Whalen", where he mentions a murder suspect hanging out here at the 301 Club and getting a call from the police when they want to check him out.

And oh yeah, someone tried to pull a Newfoundland special on this lounge back in 2017.

With Rosie sitting at the bar, the majority of our time at The New Laurier Club was spent listening to the bartender tell us about her dogs, lol.

Whatever though, I grabbed a Dominion and settled in.

Next up was the West End Club, which used to look a lot cooler on the outside.

The West End was the best dive of the night as it was absolutely packed, and packed with a wide variety of people from young folks you'd never think you'd find here, to old folks where it looked about five hours past their bedtime. It all made for a laugh and good people watching (plus the TV was showing coverage of the upcoming Chiefs-49ers Super Bowl!)

Next up was one that Rosie already knew, as I told her I wanted to go to "that bar that's under Pitts Memorial Drive" and she went, "the Station Lounge? Oh! Yeah, I've been there, that's where we go for dance night!"

Walking into The Station Lounge, it was one of our friend's cousin's birthday parties, but our friend had skipped out on it and now everyone was leaving, so I don't even know if we had a beer. Maybe one. I didn't take a picture inside regardless.

Next up we actually went downtown to one of the usual bars, but one that stays open late as we were now flirting with 2am last calls. I was feeling great by this point, which helped as the place we went had dancing and I decided it was time to dance for the one time every five years I decide to dance.

And hoo boy, did I make it the 2000s rap dance party. The Dougie. The Harlem Shake, no not that Harlem Shake, the real Harlem Shake. The Shoulder Lean. It went on and on and on. As Rosie always says that nothing good happens after midnight, I had to go and change that with my dancing, haha.

Then we met up with some other people and went to some house near Waterford Bridge Road and I only knew where we were because I spotted the area where the developers were allowed to build new houses as long as they renovated a house from 1848, but lol, they let that shit deteriorate and then demolished it without penalty.

Anyway, kitty!

We ended up getting home at some obscene hour like 7 or 8am, which led to Rosie missing birthday brunch the next day, LOL. Bad influence I am.

The next day I got myself a pickle poutine and managed to navigate the snow on the roads and the fog in my head well enough, until we eventually had a lovely dinner made by our friend Kim. There we tried to sort out the story of Isy's favourite French word, where it isn't the word for Hippopottamus (hippopotame), but the word for _____. Kim's Francophone man Yves, Kim, and Rosie all kept going through things like starfish (étoile de mer) and sea urchins (oursin), until Isy thankfully texted back after I couldn't think of the platypus, aka, l'ornithorynque.

Anyyyyyway, good times in the capital. By the time we made it to just Clarenville, the winter conditions were much improved in terms of standing snow.