You have no idea how many times I have thanked the good Lord for creating me in this century. He, in his infinite wisdom, knew exactly what he was doing when he put me in a time period blessed with hot running water and warm toasty furnaces.

Pioneer. Granted, I wouldn’t have survived pioneer life long enough to complain about it much. I would have been one of those people with a life expectancy somewhere around twelve.

I would have never ‘gone west’. If by some serious misalignment of fate I had been talked into by my pioneer equivalent of Mr. Wonderful (he would have been a cowboy, I’m sure of it) and loaded up my belongings in a covered wagon and then gotten caught in a winter storm along the way, well, let’s just say I have the utmost faith that Mr. Wonderful would have arranged for me to “accidentally” tumble out of the buckboard somewhere along the trail.

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A few days ago, Jay Allen documented the crushing 1/32″ of ice that brought Seattle to its knees. In contrast, I bring you the view of my own backyard earlier today. Here you go, you latte-drinking dirty hippies, this is what winter really looks like:

That’s right, motherfuckers, that’s no wimpy “crust”, you’re looking at over 12 inches of snow in less than six hours. For a little visual perspective, here’s my car:

We also make sure there’s plenty of black ice under all that snow because that is how we roll (or slide, as the case may be).

And when weather like this happens, do we go crying to our mommies and shut down the whole city? No way. We dig ourselves out of our parking space, throw our shit in the street, and get our asses to work. My wife called to see if her office was open today, and human resources said, “You can feel free to take the day off, you big baby — an UNPAID day off. ”

So remember that next time you coasters want to make fun of the rubes in fly-over country, because we’ll beat you with our snow shovels — while not wearing a coat, coats are for the weak — and leave you to die in a snow drift.