Snow!

My friend Paul S. came to Baltimore on the train from DC last night and spent the evening with me. After wrestling his computer onto my network only to realize that his employer had locked out all non-business web sites, we took dinner at Tapas Teatro next to the Charles theatre. After dinner, we saw the movie adaptation of Pride and Prejudice

He works for one of the school systems in the area, so we were awake at 4:00 a.m. so he could check for any delay or closing information. There was none, so he did the prudent thing and left on the 4:45 a.m. train to make sure he'd be on time, just in case.

Me? I threw on some clothes and grabbed my camera to wander around the neighborhood and take some more photos as the snow continued to fall.

I uploaded the lot of them to Flickr as a photo set.

Snow

This morning, after Paul left, I struggled with myself, trying to find the motivation to get out and take some photos. After walking outside during lunch, I'm glad I managed to get up. Predictably, the pristine snow cover at 4:30 a.m. this morning has turned to an ugly slush.

Each year, it's amusing to hear my friends lamenting about the chicken littles who shut down schools and government offices over any amount of snow. It seems that I don't know anybody at all who is fazed by a snowfall.

I remember a snow fall in Jacksonville, Florida, which was a very rare occurrence. In fact, this was the only snow fall I remember when I lived there. About an inch of snow fell in the area, shutting down 150 miles of interstate between Jacksonville and Tallahassee.

They closed all of the bridges over the St. Johns river in Jacksonville, splitting the city in half for almost two days. I was visiting a "friend" for the evening and got trapped on the wrong side of the river from my apartment and had to extend my stay. I remember seeing people trying to drive up the expressway on-ramps, losing traction and sliding back down.

Most confusing was the city's decision to attempt to de-ice the bridges with dirt rather than something like sand. The dirt simply mixed with the slush to become mud, which just froze up again. Because the bridges all had metal grilled spans in places, the ice made them very hazardous. That's why they were all closed.