Peter’s Blog V2

After record-breaking storms visiting all those regions surrounding us, New York finally got a sizable one this winter.

The District of Columbia needs to learn the spirit from the Big Apple: this city never sleeps, not even at 1AM in a freaking storm.  Armies of workers managed the streets with plows, blowers, and shovels of all sizes.  The fact that snow might’ve accumulated faster than they could clean did not discourage them… or maybe they just didn’t have a choice, like me working till 12:30AM with a pair of bad hands.

Cabbies also didn’t sleep, although they sure changed the rules a bit.  The first few that were neither occupied nor off duty asked for my destination before letting me open the door – and simply drove away once hearing Queens.  I didn’t blame them - if snow could accumulate up to 0.5″ around Times Square, it must be devastatingly trecherous outside Manhattan.  Licensed drivers wouldn’t want to risk their own lives… but those unlicensed town cars were a different story.  One of them willingly let me on to his car and offered to take me home – for an outrageous $100 in cash.  He explained that the ride would take at least 90-100 minutes due to the road condition.  At that point, I opened the door and got out.  A second unlicensed town car offered the same ride for $60.  What a bargain!  I didn’t take it.

Hungry for some Halal meat?  Look it’s open!

Back to Queens.  Thought this looked like sand dunes in a desert:

“Winter Wonderland”?

Still snowing 12 hours later:

Ice breaker:

Another army of snow busters.  I don’t know if these are, but a good majority of NYC’s labor workers are illegal immigrants.  We as a country are highly critical of the illegals… but without them, we’d be stuck!

Going back to school always makes me happy.  Even back in the days when driving down I-81 meant having to prepare for finals after Thanksgiving, I could never help but start to hum “country road… take me home…”

Well, this time we picked a really memorable weekend to visit.  The school was shut down on Friday, and so were most of the stores and restaurants in town.  Even the Math Emporium!

Nothing stops Wally World, though.  Where else would thirsty people go to clean out the water shelf?

While Blacksburg is still a rural town, the urbanization and commercialization had been cranked up like crazy.  Best Buy, Bed Bath & Beyond, Jos A Bank, and other big brand retailers creeped in.  A third parking garage is being erected in town, not that long after the first one surprised us with its presence.  The Kroger on South Main, holy cow, had doubled in size, added a drive-through pharmacy and a huge groumet section.  It’s now as impressive as Super Walmart and Boeing’s airplane factories.

Saturday’s lunch took place at Owen’s.  It brought a new definition to “home food”.  The same pasta sauce, garlic bread, General Tso, Philly cheesesteak, and smoothies that we had had hundreds of times since freshman year.  Freshens now has a new design to the cup, but that’s it.  Even the texture of the rice remained the same weird tasting that we’ve never had anywhere else.

The best moment of the weekend was when Phil walked into the bookstore and inquired, “TEN YEARS AGO, you guys used to carry this thing on that shelf…”  The cashier responded to the awkward question with professionalism, that if they had any of the older merchandise left, it would’ve been kept in another section of the store.  Right, she was probably still learning the Times Table when we last saw what Phil wanted.  Did we sound like grandpas or what?  Looking at the youthful faces around us and counting the number of businesses that used to be in More Than Coffee’s place, well, definitely didn’t help.  After all, we returned to visit our retired friend, Jason, right?

What did bring us back to youth was the incredible snow storm.  Running in knee-deep accumulation, taking silly videos, and throwing snow at each other helped discounting our maturity.  The white Drillfield, wow.

Here’s Jason, with one of several mini snowmen that we built.

One of two awesome snow forts, which always get built on the DF after a major snow:

Woohoo!  In the face!  (not a nice thing to do to the elderly, though)

And there on Alumni Mall, the cadets (I assume) built a huge snowman and a giant snowball.  It’d take some clever engineering students to make something that size.  Awesome.

Later that day, we found tons and tons of other snow sculpture around town, in front of frat houses and apartment complexes.  It was a calming throught that we all once knew how to put down the busy work to enjoy life and the world surrounding us.  The thought almost made me believe that I was young again… until I got exhausted walking across the Drillfield…

Phil and I decided to take a weekend trip back to VT.  So did a record snow storm.

We managed to escape before the worse part of it hit NOVA, and the highways were kept clean for most of the trip.  However, we did have to go through some pretty bad sections of the storm:

For the very first time since the marquee sign was installed!  No manager’s special today!

Virginia is full of farms but certain things just aren’t that visible when the world is not covered in white.  The black moo moo cows, for example, were everywhere!  Poor cows must be freezing!

Our return trip began a whole day after the snowing stopped.  Great.  Now the roads were perfectly clean and the sky was bright and clear:

We had assumed that the closer to civilization, the better the road condition would be.  After all, the rich NOVA people have all the money and expectation to keep things under control, right?

Wroooong… the closer to DC, for some reason, the worse it became.  The stretch of I-66 around Manassass/Fairfax averaged about 2 accidents per mile.  It was crazy!  We saw an H2 with the hood poped open from a collision, and watched a Camry spinning in circles until it hit another car sideways on the shoulder.  Lots of trucks, pickups, and cars trapped on the shoulder or the median.  Here’s a rather strange situation with black slush flooding onto the road:

I also expected the nation’s capital to be maintained with the same diligent snow shovelers as NYC… wrooong again!  The streets were almost not drivable!  We need more illegal immigrants!