Growing up in the Midwest, I learned many things. I learned that there were four seasons, trees can have leaves OR needles, apple orchards are mandatory in the fall, and snow was not the enemy. Oh, and that Michigan's state bird is the robin even though the fucking ungrateful bastard leaves for the winter to escape to warmer climes, and I think that it should be the goldfinch because the GOLDFINCH stays around and sings for us all year.Goddamned robins.
"I am a total asshole."So when I first moved to DC, it took some time to get used to things, weather-wise. I loved it there, with the metro and the monuments and the museums and the happy hours. But things pissed me off, sometimes. All the time, actually. The main thing that pissed me off was DC's response to weather. Weather of any kind, really. Rain, snow, sleet, falling leaves, and excessive sunshine = EVERYBODY PANIC.
My first winter there, I experienced incompetence like I could never have predicted, and from then on, I knew to expect the worst from DC. It was dubbed the "Valentine's Day Blizzard of 2003" (number five on this list), and flying back to the area after a weekend in MI, I had no idea what I was arriving to.
I took the metro home from the airport, and had a half-mile walk ahead of me. I took my usual route through buildings and the mall, but when I arrived outside at last, I couldn't believe what I saw. THREE DAYS after the snow fell, the streets were plowed, but only one lane per road. Cars were driving half in the road and half in the snow. Instead of towing cars parked on evacuation roads, they plowed snow over the roofs, leaving mounds of dirty, grey sedan-shaped blobs everywhere.
The roads were practically impassable, but sidewalks? They were completely untouched. A walk that usually took me five minutes took thirty, especially considering the fact that I had to walk in the road, carrying my roller suitcase over my head. I was swearing my ass off the whole while, obviously.I arrived back at my apartment complex to see some moron in flip flops cleaning off her SUV with a Cosmo, so at least that was hilarious.
Right, so back in December 2009, they got some snow - snow that here would have been considered a minor inconvenience - and they dubbed it the "Snowpocalypse." Also, hee! This weekend, they got about the same, and it has come to be known as Snowmaggedon. Sigh.Granted, they got a foot and a half of snow, but without the equipment to deal with that kind of fluffy precipitation, it's going to take days (at least) to recover. I'm willing to bet good money (well, to me, "good money" would be something like twenty bucks, but whatever) that there's a good chance the government will be shut down there on Monday, because that's what happened to me back in 2003. It was kinda awesome, not having to go to class. Yay, grad school!
Good luck to my DCers out there - I hope you don't have to go to work on Monday!
(All Snowmaggedon photos taken by Laurel, February 6, 2010, Washington, DC. Except for the asshole robin.)
8 comments:
I love the "hee" link. You'd be impressed though. I don't know if this winter they imported snow removal crew from the mid-west or NE, but they've actually done a fantastic job (except for the snow plow guy who tried to run me over). We'll be working Monday.
And a little correction; we got 2 feet in DC.
oh yes, the federal government is shut down today (Monday). Lem, not sure where in DC you are, but I can tell you Cap hill is horrible--Constitution (and only part of it) is plowed and that's about it, and Dupont is just as bad. Sadly I still have to fight my way into work. Apparently a coworker measured the snow around her house at 31 inches sans drift count.
I take it all back, DC sucks. I saw plows pushing slush around on streets when there were streets that weren't plowed. Also, metro is operating underground only, so why did it take a hour to get from L'Enfant to U Street? I actually thought there might be a riot.
Snow, glorious snow! Thank you for coming and re-routing me from London to Miami for one day of 80 degrees and sun. Why didn't I "miss my flight" today to stay there all week in the free hotel room? Dammit!
Also? If anyone out there is trying to get food before snOMG 2.0, do not go to the Harris Teeter in Ballston. They have nothing.
lem - I love your two posts. They are so polar opposite that it makes me all warm inside.
guv - What's funny is that lem lives in SW - you'd think that they would be ignored... Hope you get more days off!
k-10 - NICELY DONE. snOMG 2.0 was amazing and I loved it. We're currently getting ten inches here, but I think that we'll be more okay with it than say, DCers.
And yes, you should have stayed in Miami.
Au contraire. I live in the midst of Fed. buildings. Those poor fed. employees have been working like crazy (unlike the rest of us). Plus, there are a bunch of Cap. police staying at the hotel down the street. One more reason to keep those streets clear.
AMEN. I'm from North Dakota and I hear about this "Snowmageddon" and have absolutely no sympathy for the east coast. Buck up and deal with it. It is SNOW. Where I'm at we deal with it every dang year and survive just fine. Cripes.
It's sunny and 1 degree F here now. And it is BEAUTIFUL. Really nice out.
Now, if Fargo would quit building along the Red River, we might get our flooding under control. What used to be flood plains are now residential communities. And people wonder why we flooded so much last year?
Good luck with your snow. Incompetent cities are everywhere.
lem - I love the Cap police. They were always out and about near my old place on Constitution Ave, and they were very nice to look at, too.
anony - Isn't that the truth? I mean, the end result of their three storms is still more than most places could handle, but the fact that the government was closed for FOUR DAYS is hilarious to me. Then, when they did finally reopen, the metro was so worthless that police weren't even letting people down into the stations because trains were only coming every 45 minutes or so. How is that possible???
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