SNOW DAY!

We just received enough snow for them to cancel work, so I have a delightful day of doing fuck-all ahead of me. I'm in the American South, so we just received enough snow to turn everything white, and that's about it. No one is ACTUALLY snowed in, we just don't know how to drive in it. Also, people act like it's an apocalypse, because there is no bread, milk, eggs, beer or dog food to be had in any retail location.

Focus: Snow days. What do you do?

 

I have no idea, I have the good sense to live where you have to drive to the snow, and then only if you want to use it for something. I come to the snow, the snow does not come to me.

About ten years ago, I got an assignment to go to Bumblefuck, New York in March to visit some gigantic company, do a couple days' work, and sanitize and retrieve some documents. I was not looking forward to this as I was being sent alone and didn't have any backup, plus it was kind of a shit job. I complained that I didn't want to go and this was a terrible time of the year to go to Bumblefuck because of the weather. My boss tried to mollify me by sending me a PR shot of the facility I was going to visit, which of course looked like an idyllic version of the great American industry.

I Photoshopped the tallest elements of the picture so they were poking out of snow mountains in Antarctica, and sent it back to my boss. I told him "whatever, this is what it looks like in March." He thought this was hi-larious and sent it to our contact at Giant Company.

Well March rolls around and wouldn't you know it, there is a massive blizzard all up and down the East Coast. Our contact at Giant Company has forwarded my hi-larious Photoshop to his entire division because that's what it fucking looks like at the facility.

Flying into Bumblefuck is a logistical impossibility and I have to delay my trip three days just to get on a flight. I finally get there and get into my rental car in the middle of the night, in snow. I start to back out of the spot as slowly as possible. I hit the brakes, but the car keeps moving. Fortunately I was being super careful and got the car out of the Ice Lot and onto something resembling a road. I make it to my hotel after white-knuckling it down a highway where streetlights are clearly optional.

I come out of my hotel in the morning to report to Giant Company, and I can't find my fucking car. All there is in the goddamned parking lot is white lumps. I don't have any fucking idea which specific space I parked in, usually I just go to the general area and, you know, look for my car. But I can't, because all the fucking cars are covered in 2 feet of snow. So I clear off 4 or 5 cars and finally find mine, where I retrieve this brush/scraper device from the back and proceed to brush/scrape the damn car so I can get to this job I don't want to go to in the first place.

Luckily it eased up for a few days and I got out a week later, on three of the worst flights I have ever taken. Protip for United Pilots: 100-foot drops are fun on roller coasters, not so much in your crap turboprop.

In conclusion, fuck snow.

 

I'd trade for Snow - It's some kind of soggy fucking apocalypse here. The river down the hill from my house is due to rise 22 Meters (72 feet) above it's usual level by tomorrow, and then the high tide will come in and bump it up a bit more. There are almost 100 closed streets in my suburb alone. My house is elevated 105 feet above the river and we're considering how to get our pets and shit out if the water does actually come this high. Being high up - we're not hugely inconvenienced - but a bunch of my friends are currently huddled in a scout den on a hill a few suburbs over with their houses (and streets) currently under water.

I couldn't get to work this morning. I probably won't get to work tomorrow or Thursday either. Friday is a maybe.

I've so far played old xbox games, obsessed about how fucking insane this shit is, and answered phone calls from work and explained that I don't really give a fuck about their problems right now.

 

Scootah is there some kind of bad weather going on where you are?

 

My city and one other town alone was hit by the Storm Of The Century ("Snowpocalypse") in early December this year, which we saw over 42 inches of snow in less than two days and caused hundreds of cars to literally be frozen into Highway 402 without rescue for almost 24 hours.

Snow days are fine by me, except when it comes to "Snow Plough Triage" my street is the smallest in the neighbourhood, and sometimes they don't clear it out for up to 72 hours after it fucking snows.

Usually I spend my snow days like anyone else: movies, music, etc. to pass the time, anything to take my mind of the fact I hate winter. Don't get me wrong, winter has some fun aspects and once my daughter is a little bit older to enjoy it I'll probably like it anymore, but I usually spend this time of year counting the days until April.

 

Frank's day tomorrow assuming we get slammed with snow, I love living on a hill.
+ +

 

I lived in London in 2006, and on the first day of winter exams, we had a snow day due to the city being pretty much paralyzed. What did we do? Instead of being studious and taking advantage of the extra study time, we went tobogganing down the hill on campus using pizza boxes and cafeteria trays. The pizza boxes worked fantastic with their slippery coating.

All told I like snow, but since I ski, I associate the two. I'm temporarily living in a snow belt again and am 20 mins away from a small ski hill, so I'll be taking advantage of that.

 

I love snow days. Primarely because it isn't as fun to make a dirt angel as it is to make a snow angel.

I'm blessed enough to have a job that pays me enough that I can drive a gas guzzling 4x4. I generally fire it up, and head throw my snowboard in the back and head to the ski hill. THe ski hill here is nothing short of pathetic, but I love skiing enough that I can deal with it for a few hours.

Last year when we got two feet of snow in one sitting, we got a boat tow rope out and tied it to the back of my SUV, and went snowboarding through the abandoned streets.

 

I love snow and am very very VERY happy I grew up dealing with it for 4-5 months out of the year. If you've never been in a Southern city when it snows for the first time in a decade it's an amazing experience. Basically true chaos... but you know it'll end. Eventually.

Like Nett, I love a good snow day or three because it would really take about 6ft of snow to trap me. I have all the tools and toys to clear out my yard/drive and get around in the snow if I have to.

When we got smashed by that big ice storm a couple years ago it was amazingly peaceful to be out of touch with civilization for a few days while they reopened roads and restored power to the cities and towns. I was without power for 11 days but I had a generator, plenty of food, and various heat sources at my disposal so it was kind of fun. Snowshoeing a couple miles to the general store for a coffee and to catch up on the local news was something to do.

As luck would have it the forecast says we'll be getting 12-18" of the white stuff tonight and tomorrow. Can't wait.

 

Fire up the hottub to 104 and crank up Jimmy Buffett on the patio speakers.

 

I find the panic associated with snow in the states so retarded. I mean up here huge quantities of snow is a simple, regular occurence. We've got the equipment, the logistics and everything to take care of it without any kind of issue.

Then i accidentally zap on some american news channel and see the good citizen of New York flipping out over a foot of snow. And I laugh.

 

Around this time last year the DC area got smacked with two back-to-back blizzards. I think we wound up with 3 feet of snow or something similarly ridiculous for the region. My job still mandated that I be there, so I stayed with a friend to ensure that I'd be within walking distance. My car got snowed into the lot (as in, completely covered and immobile) and a series of unfortunate events led to me having no place to stay after the first two days. For the next 5 days, I pretty much roamed the area on foot, staying wherever I could. I made my "home base" the locker room I use at work, but moved around to not draw any attention to the fact that I was basically homeless. It's definitely because I knew I'd be fine once the snow melted, but that week was a lot more fun than I thought it'd be. The uncertainty of where I'd be sleeping/eating made each day feel like a game. Of course if it was on a more permanent basis, I'm sure I'd have been much less enthusiastic about the situation.

 

Also I absolutely NEED to add one of these to the stable after watching kids up the road rip around on one.

Complete badassery in the snow. Plus in the event of a "state of emergency" situation which happens here at least once a year you can use any vehicle at your disposal to get around on the roads. That would be fun.

 

Now THAT shit was interesting. While we're used to dealing with inept snow removal in the NJ suburbs, prior to that blizzard I'd seen many snowstorms during my tenure working in NYC. Every one of them was cleaned up amazingly quickly, and amazingly efficiently. So why did people flip out over that last one?

Because the sanitation workers, in attempts to protest budget cuts, decided to fuck it up on purpose. They called it a "work slowdown"

The people in the outer boroughs whose streets weren't plowed didn't have such pleasant names for it. It was REALLY fucked up, the sidewalks weren't cleared, there were massive puddles everywhere, and the roads were still pretty icy.

Combine that with the storm hitting the day after Christmas when a million southerners and Midwesterners who don't know a snowstorm from the apocalypse in town fucking up sidewalk traffic and yeah, 2 ft of snow really fucked up the city. But it doesn't usually.

 

There's supposed to be a "winter weather event" in the Seattle area starting sometime today. The last "event" we had (near Thanksgiving) caused absolute gridlock all around the city. Few people have winter tires, and trying to start or stop on all the hills around here on bald summer tires created severely fucked up traffic. It took me 7 and a half hours to make a 60 mile roundtrip to pick up my girlfriend from work. People were abandoning their cars on the side of the road and walking. It was absolute insanity. All for about 6" of snow and a little bit of ice.

This time, they're "prepared." Which apparently just means that TheGirlfriend's work is putting her up in a hotel tonight before shit gets bad. Fine by me, I'll share some scotch with the puppy and watch TV and fart all night long.

 

I too came up in the Dirty Dirty. Through college, I often got a preemptive day off just for the possibility of snow, or ice, even. Thus, I grew up associating the white stuff with fun, freedom, catching up on movies and books and, in college, breaking the whiskey seal early and watching the pretty powder through the window.

Imagine my surprise when I moved to Chicago and realized that no one EVER gets a day off because of snow - in fact, it snows through much of the winter, no one really gives a shit at all, and you're considered just as late as you would have been otherwise. (Bus was running late? Should have anticipated that, slackass.) After I lost track of the number of times my hair froze into icicle dreadlocks on the way to work, I started hating it, particularly the slick ice on the sidewalks that caused me to bust my ass hard at least once a month. I was happy to leave, and excepting one spellbinding road trip through Colorado ski country, I've never really missed winter weather.

In Arizona Bay, that's not snow, that's ash, and it's time to get the fuck out the Foothills, again. Our seasons are fires, floods, earthquakes and riots.