It seemed a good idea at the time.

We could take a shortcut - Secondary Highway 180 - across the brow of this big province and be in Grand Falls/Grand-Sault well ahead of the Relay Torch caravan that would be stopping farther north along Highways 11 and 17 to take in Dalhousie and Campbellton. We could then scout out the best positions for photos and the torchbearers with the best stories.

We set out in rain that soon turned to hard rain, and then to sleet as we headed into higher ground - bush country, with not a single dwelling for upwards of 100 kilometres and not a prayer of a cell phone signal. Then the sleet turned to snow and the road turned to ice.

Bad weather for a four-by-four with studded tires; hideous weather for a rental car with no snow tires and a flimsy windshield scraper in the trunk.

We made it, with a little luck.

As for the incredible luck of the Olympic Torch Relay, it is about to turn - at least so far as weather is concerned.

Through 30 days now the relay has been blessed with unseasonable weather. Warm and dry in Newfoundland, so sunny and warm in Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia that the grass was greening up again.

The one brief reality check had been at Port aux Basques, where the caravan raced to catch the overnight ferry to Sydney, Nova Scotia, and ran into a turn in the weather that seemed, for a short while, to threaten the to-the-second timetable this thing runs on.

There was sleet and hail and snow there, too, but also high winds that, at times, blew the rain so hard the drops felt like BBs. The torch bearers of Port aux Basques, however - perhaps because they are used to tough conditions - insisted on carrying their torches through the driving rain and wind. With smiles.

And as for the planned community celebration, they simply moved it indoors and, in the words of Deena Stigas, who runs the torchbearer operations, "turned it into a great big community barn dance."

The relay has been lucky, but it is also highly organized and run to a microsecond timetable by Vidar Eilertsen, a smiling Norwegian with an uncanny knack for getting bystanders to do exactly what he tells them without a single curse, so far, being hurled his direction.

"We're 90 seconds ahead of schedule," one photographer overheard Eilertsen say into his mouthpiece as the caravan moved through a Nova Scotia town, "pleaser slow down from six kilometres an hour to five."

Soon, however, it will be the conditions, not the gas pedal, dictating timing. This week will see December arrive and it will also see the caravan begin its long and twisting trek through the various snowbelts of Quebec and Ontario.

After that, the prairies.

In January.

The Canadian Climate is about to join this caravan, and it will have its say, just as Eilertsen has been having his.

The organizers have planned for this, as much as Canadian weather can be planned for. They work with Environment Canada on both long-term and short-term detailed forecasts. They also work closely with whatever community is involved. There are no standards established - e.g. no one runs if it dips below -35.7C - as each situation is considered unique.

"It's really about assessing day-of," says relay director Jim Richards.

"It is a winter relay," he adds, and whenever it is possible to be outside they will be. The torch runs and community celebrations are considered separate, with runners more able to deal with moving short distances through the cold than families able to stand about for up to two hours in frigid weather.

There is also the possibility - as happens regularly in Canadian winters - of the lost day, or days, when travel is simply prohibitive.

"Every day we've got contingency time built in," says Richards. If the relay is trapped overnight, a new schedule is created. If even running is prohibitive, plans are in place to have the runner pass the torches in a community centre rather than out on the road.

Richards, who comes from the prairies, knows how tough it can get.

On a January day two years ago in Prince Albert, I happened to be covering a federal by-election when the temperature plummeted to, at one point, -58C. Your nostrils locked on the first breath. In the time it took to plug in the car, hands turned to spanner wrenches. Tires on vehicles froze in squares. Those very few vehicles that would start, and try moving, found that the intersections were like solid walls of white smoke, the exhaust thick as toothpaste as it squeezed out during red lights. The RCMP took to the airwaves to tell people to remain indoors and to attempt travel only in the direst emergency.

The Olympic Flame will be warming up Prince Albert on January 11 and 12.

There are colder places. The coldest temperature ever recorded in Canada was Snag, Yukon, on a February day in 1947.

It was so cold that if anyone outside ventured to talk, their breath froze instantly and fell to the ground like white powder, some of the men swearing you could hear a small tinkling sound as it hit. One man threw a pan of water in the air and watched it fall like gravel, the droplets having frozen instantly in the air.

There will be days to come when it will be so cold that lips won't work any better than batteries. The mere thought of someone dancing in the back of a sponsor's truck and yelling "Are we happy, PA?" simply does not compute.

Robertson Davies once wrote that Canadians were tied so closely to their climate that "cold breeds caution."

It will need to, as this huge, dancing caravan attempts to cross the rest of the country in whatever weather is coming.