The latest round of snow started Tuesday afternoon. I left work a little before my usual departure time to avoid the dodge’em mess the highways were likely to turn into and the wife did the same.
The swirling snow stuck to the roads and the already frozen roadways began to ice over. I saw no accidents but my wife saw about half a dozen with some folks completely on their sides in ditches. She left work only about a quarter hour after I did but it was a very important 15-minute window, it seems.
The most treacherous part was just a couple of miles from my house where the asphalt in a three-way intersection looked like it was carved out of a 100-yard long diamond. Even I skidded a little there. We both made it home safely but neither one of us were surprised to see the message appear on our phones that school for the next day was cancelled.
Sigh. Again.
By Wednesday at 10AM the roads were not only looking drivable, some patches even looked dry. I checked out the situation and, other than a few neighborhood areas that are in the shadows of trees, everything was fine. After snowball fights with neighbor kids were done we came inside to warm up. I didn’t want to sit “trapped” at home again with the boy so we went and got my oil changed and my inspection rescheduled for that afternoon.
At the dealership we watched Tom and Jerry and Loony Tunes cartoons and ate movie theater-like popcorn while we waited. Sounds weak, I know, but there was another dad there with his kid who likewise just wanted to get out of the house. We (the dads) had fun trying to remember the details of these 65-year old shows “Oh, yeah, this is the one where Foghorn Leghorn paints the dog’s tongue green” and “Hey, I love this one! Those two gophers mess with that actor dog and bounce him all over the place with magnets, right?” The kids just embraced the old-school violence with total relish.
On the way back home I stopped by a Radio Shack that I knew was on the “closing soon” list and helped loot the place for electronics stuff at up to 50% off list. Today the prices drop to 70% off list but they are closed because of last night’s snow (darn darn darny darn).
Ah, yes. Last night’s snow. Nine inches of dense, wet, packy stuff. This event closed school not just for today but for tomorrow as well. It was heavy enough to bend shrubs to the ground and rip the sign off a Chinese restaurant in town. I think as of two o’clock this afternoon the completed and half-built snowmen in my neighborhood outnumbered the actual people here. The semi-igloo that was built last week is now basically an indestructible ice fortress thanks to the repeated freeze-warm-rain-freeze cycle it has gone through.
A few kids (ten-year-olds, I guess) had the ambitious idea of using the fairly untouched street snow to start their snowman. They rolled it and rolled it and rolled it until they saw it was big enough - that is, they stopped when they could barely move it. Their plan (which I overheard while I was out shoveling) was to roll it back to their place so they could build the next layer. Their property was about 100 yards down the road.
You see where I am going with this, I think.
Light dawned for them as well, and they decided that putting the thing on a sled and towing it there would solve their (quite literally) ever-growing problem. They managed to get their three-foot-wide ball onto the sled but the ropes they were using simply weren't designed to pull 400-pound loads and kept either breaking or failing in some other way. Even with two kids pushing and one pulling they only made it about ten feet.
They had a small conference and walked up to me. I stopped shoveling and said “What’s up, guys?” The spokesman for the group said “Um… Would you like a free giant snowball?”
I thought “Nicely done, kid. Nicely done. I was dying to know what you were going to say.”
“Sure!” I said, brightly. “Just push it into the yard so it’s not in the street. I’ll get my son to help you.” After about five minutes the four of them just barely managed to get it over the curb and park it in the grass. I thanked them and they walked off as the boy and the girl next door took turns climbing it and arguing over what they should do with it. I just hope it’s not sitting on a sprinkler head… Meh. I’m sure it’s fine.
The roads are now covered in untreated slush and the temperature is 32 degrees. It will drop to the low twenties overnight and will not get above 32 until 11AM or so. I hope they don’t plow. If they do plow, though, I hope they put down salt and sand otherwise they are just resurfacing the ice rink, you know?
As tired of reading about barely newsworthy snow events as I am tired struggling to come up with something to say about them? I feel for you, brother. I mean, look at a satellite picture of North America right now - what else is there?
It’s 2015. Screw the flying car. Where’s my cloned mammoth?
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