Now for those who know me, I grew up in Florida. Despite that handicap, and I do call growing up in Florida a handicap, I do know my way around snow, and I know that 13 inches in the great scheme of things, ain't a lot of snow, but allow me to make my point.
When I was 18 years old I was made qualified to push a snow blower around Ft. Devens. At the US Military Academy at West Point, I watched the snow fall on the shoulders of the bronze statue of General George S. Patton, as if he was frozen in that moment of time when his forces raced to Bastogne, Belgium to relieve the 101st Airborne at the Battle of the Bulge.
Then there was the infamous Thanksgiving weekend spent in a quiet farmhouse outside of Ft. Devens. (That's a story for another time, maybe I'll tell that one at the West Chester Story Slam in January!)
To continue proving my snow pedigree, I participated in an exercise with the US Army and Japanese Ground Self Defense Forces in Sapporo, Japan, in January, I've had Snow ball fights at Fort Sheridan, near Chicago, Illinois, I've skied in West Virginia, Washington State, Idaho, Colorado, Utah and Pennsylvania, and I've lived and worked in Salt Lake City and Denver for a year each.
So again, I know my way around snow. Unlike the Eskimos however, I have only one word for it. Snow.
And did it ever snow in West Chester! Well, for West Chester it was a lot of snow. So much Snow that Starbucks had the nerve to close down early on Saturday. Was it a lot of snow by the standards I've seen? No. Was it enough to paralyze the borough? Thankfully no, but not because it was an underwhelming amount of snow, but of an overwhelming response by the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation and the Borough Management team.
I've got to hand it to people around here but they were on the ball. The timing to deal with the snow seemed right. Not wasting time and resources in the middle of the storm, but attacking the roads full force the moment the last snowflakes fell. Dump trucks, Front End Loaders, Pickups with snowplows, even Bobcat mini front end loaders got into the mix, clearing sidewalks, roadways, alleys, pretty much everything you might walk or drive on. Of course private individuals and business owners did their share too.
Did it help that the snowstorm came on a weekend? Man you bet your life it did. Still, the fact that it was for all intents and purposes a non event, and as such it allowed those of us without the responsibility to do anything about the piles of snow the opportunity to simply enjoy a winter wonderland. It is this fact, and I have said this countless of times before and will continue to do so, that reminds us of the quality of life we share here in West Chester.
You know this being an airshow like the last airshow I attended, what stands out in my mind was the non airshow related stuff, like how nice the ride out was. More farmland, more shady lanes, more twisty roads, I took Google's "walking" advice as opposed to driving advice to come up with a map there, so I would end up on these back roads on purpose so I didn't feel like I was backing up any traffic. I passed this really cool set of ruins on the way there, and then when I arrived there, I got to park among the motorcycles and antique cars that were on display there. I felt like a VIP and I got some looks.
The other cool thing was stumbling upon someone's "hanger". I guess he opened it up for the airshow, and with the exception of a beat up glider hanging from the ceiling, this was really one man's collection of antique motorcycles. Nortons, BSA's, Vincents, Triumphs, and old Indians and Harley Davidsons. There's no law that says you have to keep airplanes in an airplane hanger, heck late in Steve McQueen's life he practically lived in his hanger with his airplane and motorcycles.
I took a lot of photos on my little Nikon Coolpix, you know I'm pretty happy with it, and it seems to be robust enough with features that I will be able to do some cool things with it, if I can have the attention span longer than that of a gnat to read the instruction manual. I'll put a lot of the stuff either on 
When I was in the Army Reserves, I got to fly only one time with our aircraft to an airshow in Fort Meyers. We didn't normally do the airshow circuit because of the clandestine nature of our work, so we did our missions in obscurity. This time though, it was right after Desert Storm, so I had a lot of people thanking me for my service. It was sort of awkward because I sat out the war at the Presidio of Monterey, California. (If you are going to miss a war, that's the place to do it) Still it was cool, because I had been that nerdy kid who knew what every airplane on the ramp was, and then later as a Teenager, the pimply faced kid in a Civil Air Patrol uniform standing some sort of guard duty next to some warbird while the millionaire pilot/owner hung out eating hot dogs in the VIP tent hobnobbing with the Blue Angels.
