Snowbound and down

Sigh.

First off, let me say Happy New Year! For that matter, Merry Christmas and Chappy Chanukah. (You like that last one? Yea me too.)  Anyway, sorry I didn't write a blog for December, I was going to put in my 2 cents about the local controversy about how the Philadelphia Free Thought Society (Atheist) didn't get to put up their "Tree of Knowledge" decorated with ornaments that are the covers of books written by famous non-believers.  I was going to juxtapose this with the fact that a few blocks down the street a homeowner who really goes all out for Christmas with the inflatable lawn decorations had some of them stolen right off his lawn so he pulled all his decorations inside in protest.  I was going to cleverly tie together with some wit and insight on freedom of expression, religious freedom, and commercialism, then I realized I'd get in over my head and decided to drop the whole thing because in the end I would have probably arrived at a depressing conclusion.

 Speaking of depressing, what's the deal with all this snow?  Again I've mentioned it before, despite my Florida nativity, and my Cuban ethnicity, I know snow.  In fact, here are some pictures of me in the snow from when I was in the Army.

Ok here technically I'm not in the snow, but I'm taking this picture hiding in my room in the barracks instead of going to PT in the snow, so I still count it. Ft Devens, 1986

Here I am in Chitose, Saporro, Japan, January 1989. Coldest place I've ever been.

They had us staying in WWII barracks instead of the Marriott this one time, can you believe it? 

Fort Sheridan, Illinois 1993

I think if you looked back at all my blogs over the last 3 years, you'd think I live in some Arctic frontier town or something.  Today of course is no exception, we've gotten snow overnight, with more snow coming this afternoon.  I tell you, it's bad enough with the snow and never seeing the sun during the day, but with the early darkness of daylight savings time, I'm inclined to lend a lot of credence to that whole "Seasonal Affective Disorder" thing aka "S.A.D.", can you believe it?

Well despite it all, one has to make the best of things, like today, when I had to go get Lana's car from where it was parked, (why is she parked outside, blocks away from our apartment, instead of in the warm comfort of the newly built parking garage you ask? Because if you are not out of the garage by 7:30 AM, they close the gates and start charging you to leave, 75 cents every half hour.  If she starts work at 3:00 PM, well, you can imagine it'll start to add up, so we play this game every other day of finding a place to park near Marshall Park) and of course when I got there the car had been covered with up to 6 inches of snow.

Trying to make light of things, I gave her car a Mohawk, (Snowhawk?) 

 Finally, coming back in from the cold, this is what my scooter looked like.

Well, what can I say, we're all hanging in there to one varying degree or another, it's very hard because it's very easy that in addition to the environmental factors, we allow that mental parasite known as the internet to get it's clutches on our brainstem, and we spend these dark evenings reading article after article about how everything is so terrible in these United States, whether it's about the economy, the war in Afghanistan, the rise of China, or ironically, the weather, for that matter.  Oh and let me tell you, it's really hard, but a bit of advice from me to you would be to avoid reading the comments on certain articles, the things people spout off these days because of the anonymity, I tell ya, sheesh!

Please though, don't be shy, feel free to leave a comment!  A special note to my readers from around the world, tell us how you are feeling?  Russia, China, Japan, Brazil, India, UK, I see you there landing on my blog, check in won't you? Does anybody else on the planet have a sense of brightness of future right around the corner, or is everyone feeling the same kind of ennui that we are here?

Maybe instead of hiding under blankets, I need to get out there and make the best of it.  I may end up in Arizona one day and then I'll be missing the snow.....then again, maybe not.  Oh the heck with it, I think I'll go build a snowman.

Snowmageddon, West Chester PA 2010

See you soon!


Oh by the way, anybody else think the title of today's blog entry is even remotely clever?  I do....just saying...

West Chester Snowpacolypse 2009

Hello from under over 13 inches of snow in West Chester, Pennsylvania!


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.

General Patton in much better weather than Belgium 1944

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.

Grounded Zero Zero

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.