The coldest corner in North America
WINNIPEG, Manitoba -- Be sure to join our live game blog tonight at 8:30 from the MTS Centre in absolutely horrifically frigid Winnipeg. Paul Gaustad is out tonight and probably the next two games as well and Lindy Ruff said a forward may join the team tomorrow in St. Louis.
The building here is really neat. A tiny little bandbox. Our man John Vogl used to work in Georgia and he loved Atlanta trips. He's still mourning their loss. So on the day the Sabres make their first trip to Winnipeg in 1996, give a look back to June at this link to Vogl's Winnipeg-Atlanta comparison.
I went somewhere today that Atlanta doesn't have -- the coldest intersection in North America (click the pic for a bigger view). That's the billing of the corner of Portage Avenue and Main Street in downtown Winnipeg. The temperature was minus-27 Celsius and the windchill was minus-35 Celsius according to the radio (so we're talking minus-16F and wind chills of minus-31F). Your breath barely escaped your mouth. You could feel your cheeks. I could hear John Facenda in my ears because this truly was The Frozen Tundra.
When I took my glove off to snap the shutter, I could feel my hand freezing. What's that they say about how many seconds it takes for exposed flesh to freeze? Believe me, it's true. Went to a convenience store underground -- a lot of buildings are mercifully connected -- and the clerk asked where I was from. She said in broken English, "Winnipeg is worse than Buffalo. Crazy freezing, eh?"
Eh. Crazy freezing. But mighty friendly people. Stay tuned.
---Mike Harrington
(www.twitter.com/bnharrington)
