snow, snow, wherefore are thou?

Usually around this time, people in my neck of the woods have had enough of winter's cold and snow.  But, this year, we have barely had an inch of the stuff. It has barely even been cold enough to make snow.  It has to be at least -2°C for that.  Mostly we are all walking around in a giddy daze, marvelling at yet another January spring day. As I prepare this post it is 7:30 am and an overcast 7°C

The lakes have not frozen over, so all the ice fishing huts have stayed in storage

The outdoor rinks have not materialized and the ponds are risky 

so Schroeder, Sally, Violet, Lucy and Snoopy might be skating on thin ice

And, while over on the east coast may have had a massive winter storm, we got nothing.  Our ski hills (note hills, not mountains) are open, but mostly with man made snow

and no front yards have had any snowmen lurking

see what other winter scenes have been found at Sunday Stamps II

1908 CCM

Every Friday the 13th, thousands of motorcycles descend on the small town of Port Dover on Lake Erie. On a nice summer's day, attendance can reach +100,000.
I've never been. But, I have seen news reports of the event and heard from others who have been. This year there will be only one Friday the 13th - in May.
It all started in 1981 when a few friends got together at the suggestion of biker Chris Simon. They had such a good time they decided to meet up on the next Friday the 13th, and the next ... and a tradition was born. 
As for this stamp, issued in 2013, it shows a unique view of a 1908 CCM. It was designed by Mark Warburton with illustration by Mark Pilon. 
The Light Weight Motor Cycle had a Swiss designed engine that could be installed on any conventional bike frame, which made maintenance simple. It was billed as a "Gentleman's Motor Cycle" and was said to have no noise or vibrations.

for cycling at Sunday Stamps

dazzling swan

Where I live, we have more swans in the bay during the winter months than in the summer. Some years there have been as many as 200; a mix of permanent residents and those who have flown down from northern Ontario.
I cannot express how excited I was to receive this dazzling swan by Finnish illustrator and designer Klaus Haapaniemi in the dying days of 2015! According to Posti, the Gold Swan's ornate decorations were inspired by eastern Finnish and Slavic cultural traditions. The gold foil embossing is hard to photograph, but it is fun to play with as you turn the stamp in many directions to catch the light. This is Haapaniemi's first stamp design, though similar patterns can be found in his designs for a Finnish housewares store Iittalia (link shows examples, plus more of other beautiful designs.)

and see more water loving birds at See it on a Postcard 

suspension

For bridges on stamps, I chose these two partly because I like suspension bridges, but mostly because I have travelled across both.

The first, the Mackinac Bridge 3¢ stamp from 1958 shows off the newly built "Mighty Mac" that runs five miles, connecting the Upper and Lower Peninsulas of Michigan across Lakes Huron and Michigan. Before the bridge was built, travellers had to either drive all the way around Lake Michigan through Wisconson, or take a ferry. Either way, it was an hours long excursion.
The time that we drove across, a friend was at the wheel who, it turns out, was more nervous than I about long, high bridges. It was a Sunday. On the radio was playing hymns. "Nearer My God to Thee" escorted us to the other side. Neither of us was able to move to change the station.
Apparently, (I now have discovered) the bridge authority will provide a chauffeur, at no extra cost, to accompany any timid drivers. You can get more facts and stats here, but trust me, it's a long bridge.

By the time I crossed this bridge connecting New York's Staten Island to Brooklyn, I'd been seriously working on my fear of long, high bridges. I was actually excited to cross it. (But, again, I wasn't actually driving) It has a suspended span of 4/5th of a mile (or 4,260') and was built in 1964, the same year this stamp was issued.  The bridge was named for Giovanni da Verrazzano, a 16th C explorer who was the first European to enter New York Harbor and the Hudson River. This was a controversial choice, but with much lobbying the Italian Historical Society finally won, though for many years people simply called it the 'Narrows Bridge', or the 'Brooklyn-Staten Island Bridge'. According to one source, the name was first rejected because Robert Moses, the city planner and "master builder of NYC", thought the name was too long and besides which he'd never heard of him! Maybe that's why it is spelled wrong, with fewer letters?
Apart from the fact that all ships must pass under this bridge to get to the Harbor (necessitating cruise ships to be designed to fit), it is also the starting point of the New York City Marathon.

cross over to See it on a Postcard to find more bridges