A couple of movies, and snow

The first snowfall of the season came today, with bitter cold accompanying it.  I went out for a run as the snow started, but only went a mile as my hands were freezing despite wearing gloves.

Yesterday I went to see a movie at the mall, following a lunch of pizza at noon at the Lost Dog Cafe.  I hadn't been to see a movie at a theatre in over a year.

A Monster Calls was the movie, dealing with a boy's struggles coping with his mother's death to illness, aided or perhaps goaded by the appearance of a spectre in the form of a massive walking tree.  A movie to bring a date to it was not, as it was oppressively overwrought.

But the trip to the cinema was salvaged by seeing a second movie on the same day, Hidden Figures, a film about the incipient American space program as it battled the Russians for celestial ascendency even as it massively handicapped itself by discriminating against brilliant talent readily at hand in the form of capable African-Americans who were denied the opportunity to prove their worth due to the prejudices, customs and laws of the times in the South.  The long-suffering underclass finally overcame the obstacles presented however, a triumph not of the American spirit but of the human spirit in the everlasting struggle against mendacity and evil.

Buffalo, or Global Warming

I went to Buffalo last week on business, in December!  Up there they were complaining that they'd had no measurable snowfall this season yet, which set a centuries-old record.

Buffalo is a great old town, I understand once it was the fourth largest town in the country, an American president was killed there and now, despite its nasty weather, it is a hotbed of regulatory enforcement because it has an underemployed, underutilized educated population coupled with a good phone network which leads to this.  Think commission sales.

I was there in January for a week (!) when there was no running because of their record snowfall then.  Too much ice and snow around which violates my first rule of running, Be Safe.

This time there was no snow or ice underfoot and though it was cold in the morning, it was not inhospitable.  I had a great four mile run running down Main Street, by the river, back up the other way and past the old being-restored great buildings from the 1910s.  Check out the pictures.

April's Fool

On Sunday afternoon I ran my first race of the year, my first in almost a year, a 5K on the W&OD Trail in slanting sleet, in the winter that won't end.  The late-bulletin notice from the race director said the rain (it had rained all morning) was predicted to end an hour before the race began, which it did.

That's when the the snow started.  If I hadn't already paid $35, I wouldn't have run it.

But this race is a mere half mile from my house so I've run it three straight years, ever since I returned to running from my two-year injury layoff.  In 2011 it was my first race back, and I barely squeaked in under thirty minutes, which was my goal, at 29:30.

I got progressively better the next two years, at 27:53 then 27:23 and second in my AG.  I was beat out by another former president of the DCRRC who is also discontented with that club's direction, my friend Bob Platt.

With ten minutes to spare, I jogged down the trail to the start and got my racing bib.  It was cold, in the upper 30s, and the blacktop trail had a layer of slush on it the consistency of wallpaper paste.

The race is held each year in memory of Walter Mess, the driving force behind the creation of the W&OD Trail, who was an OSS agent during WW2.  Kicking off this year's race was Roger Neighborgall, a Ranger who stormed Fortress Europa with his comrades on D-Day (on the left presenting a memorial to the Mess family pre-race, on the right is race director Jay Wind).

And then we were off, running into a slanting sleet the wind was carrying into our eyes.  Half a mile out we went over the very slippery wooden bicycle bridge over Leesburg Pike.

By then the position of all other racers relative to me was pretty much set.  Only one person passed me the rest of the way, a woman in colorfully striped knee socks, while I subsequently passed two men.

After the first doubling back on the trail a mile out, the wind abated because it was behind us.  Going over the Bicycle Bridge a second time was worse than the first time.

Tantalizingly, we passed the start (and finish) line at the two-mile mark and went a further half-mile.   The race winner, local legend Ted Poulos, passed me in his stretch run going the opposite direction.

He was being chased futilely by a 22-year old boxer, merely cross-training, who came in 2d less than a minute behind.  Shortly after the viewing pleasure of the unfolding front end of the race, I reached the far turnaround point and headed back into the wind for my stretch run, dipping my ball cap so that the bill would keep the stinging sleet out of my eyes.

I pushed it across in 28:30, my 4th worse 5K time ever but a delight to me because I have returned to running after a layoff in 2009-2011 and the conditions were so chaotic that they were fun.  To cap it off I took 3d in my age group--out of 3--, being presented with a certificate for $25 off a pair of shoes at a running store in Baltimore, for my award winning finish at the Potomac River Run Marathon, expires 12/31/13.  LOL.  (The lonely boxer in his runner-up run.)

Slip Slidin' Away

It's been a rough winter.  This is my fourth snow day of the season, the government closed again.

I went out intending to do a 2-mile run in the blowing snow this morning, but the whipping wind made it too cold so I reduced my run (with plenty of pauses to take pictures) to one mile mostly on the pristine W&OD Trail.  There was about 3 inches of powdery snow covering an undercoating of sheer ice from last night's freezing rain and sleet before it turned to snow.

The going was okay, but my ears and face were cold.  Gotta keep up the five-times running per week, you know, or all order might disrupt in the world and bad things could happen like WW3 in the Crimea (tone down the rhetoric, prez).

On the street leading back to my house the snow plow was operating.  His scraping of the roadway exposed the ice sheet overlaying the asphalt so I had to walk it in the last quarter mile, but it was an invigorating run.

Three snowy miles

Unable to sleep, I slipped out of the house for a run on the nearby W&OD Trail early in the morning, stepping into the white landscape of an early spring snow, wet, heavy and splashy.  Twelve hours earlier I had traversed this very same path in my first race of the year, a completely satisfactory effort in a 5K on the same paved blacktop pathway, now covered with snow.

                               (Railroad Avenue.)
Off I set down the street that led to the trail, my footfalls evoking a splash of wet snow at every foot strike.  Though the street was dark and deserted this early in the morning, a silent wonderland it was not.

Down Railroad Avenue and onto the bike path I went.  My initial labored breathing had modulated into a regular pattern of deep breaths as I gingerly ran along, being careful not to slip on the sloppy, slippery surface.

                (The trail approaching the bicycle bridge.)
It was a pretty landscape, every blemish in the land covered in a billowy white blanket with further large, thick snow crystals coming down heavily.  Half an hour and three miles later I slipped back into the house, wet and cold but feeling fulfilled.

Storm Two

We're supposed to get rain today or tomorrow which might finally wash away the piles of dirty snowbanks lying everywhere from the double set of blizzards we were hit with earlier this month. It's been the snowiest winter ever in DC.

The first storm was fun, because you could go down and play in it as it fell and afterwards, although it was deep. The second storm arrived four days later and was brutal. It came with a howling wind, causing it to snow sideways. It was frigid, left an icy shell of top level snow and was no fun. It forced the snow inside the house.



The next day did dawn, however.


The streets were impassable.






Some people had fun with it though.

Storm One

Here are some pictures from the first of two heavy snowstorms that hit the DC area this month. This is the twenty-five incher (in my town). The blob on the left is my pick 'em up truck; the two black tips are the ends of the extended windshield wipers.



It took all day to dig out.







The next storm, the bad one, was coming.

Ruminations on snowy weekends

DC’s third snowstorm in ten days only dropped a trace amount of snow last night so federal offices opened again after a two-hour delay. Walking anywhere by navigating alongside moving traffic, because many sidewalks along arterial roads are not shoveled, is still tricky. The temperature has hovered around freezing since the first storm so no melting is going on.

The city was filled with huge construction equipment working over the weekend. Tracked earth movers filled dump trucks with frozen blocks of snow from snow piles on every street corner for removal, improving sight lines immensely and helping finding parking. Whenever a heavy piece of equipment clanked on down to the next corner, its tracks scuffed and scarred the streets and tore up asphalt patches in the roadway. This is a series of storms that will keep us paying for street paving well into next summer.

Around my house I have been able to observe the use of my yard from trails in the snow across it, which is interesting. There is a feral cat that lives in the open space behind my fence line (the W&OD Trail) and he uses my yard a lot for concealment during the day. He leaves tell-tale tracks going across the undisturbed snow in my back yard each morning. I have also discovered that a group of boys regularly vaults my anchor fence and uses my side yard to get from the street to the open space and back again, which is okay. After all, I was a boy once too.

There’s no warm-up in the foreseeable future, so the snowy conditions are going to be here for awhile, apparently. I have a sibling who lives in the Twin Cities who would feel right at home at my house.

Slowly Recovering

Friday's commute to work took me two hours, thanks to the aftereffects of the recent twin blizzards which had kept the federal government closed since Monday. Mostly I walked in the roadways to the nearest open Metro station (all above-ground stations were closed when the system opened), which was open, a few miles away. I shared the single plowed lane in each direction with cars.

Curse on you folks who actually shovel your sidewalk but don't clear a path through the snow bank at the end of the walkway to the street, leaving pedestrians to precariously climb over a towering, jagged snow wall at the end of the block. My journey on the frozen, rutted surface while jogging down traffic lanes as passing traffic threw up salt-laden road spray has caused the tendinitis in my tender ankle, which has prevented me from running for the past four months, to flare up again.

Metro had a derailment as well, slightly injuring three patrons and snarling the already overtaxed system. Metro is the deadliest mass transit system in the U.S. with a horrible safety record as its infrastructure inexorably deteriorates thanks to aging and neglect.

When I returned from work all of the stations had been restored to service but there were tremendous crowds in the system because it was so slow with such long waits between trains. I couldn't board the first train due to overcrowding but I got on the second train that came by, barely. Two stops later, as yet more people wedged aboard, I seriously wondered if it was possible to suffocate in so overcrowded a car as a crush of entering people forced me against an upright pole in a breathtaking press. I kept reminding myself that I am not claustrophobic as I tried to keep my diaphragm constantly filled with the stank air.

More snow is expected Monday and the federal government has already announced that it will be closed.

The Good Ol' Days

After a week of being closed due to record snowfalls, federal offices are open on a limited schedule. Three blizzards in one season has overtaxed the DC area, and for me to get to work today, I would have to walk five miles to (and presumably back again from) the nearest underground Metro Station alongside an icy snowbank in roadways that are down to two lanes, sharing the road with moving traffic because many sidewalks aren't shoveled. More snow is expected on Monday.

A year ago I was sailin' the Keys, mon.

Closeness

It's official. This is the snowiest winter (54+ inches) in recorded history in DC, with six weeks to go.

My office has been closed since last Friday. That's also the last day I received any mail, two blizzards ago.

It reminds me of when I lived in Colorado, all except for the closed-office part. All of the sidewalks are shoveled and the sun is doing its work on the icy parts.

Snowshoveling promotes neighborhood closeness. The standoffish couple across the street were shoveling the ice chunks left by the snowplow at the head of their driveway this morning in preparation to driving away and going to work. I went over to help clear the debris so they could get underway.

Did I say they were standoffish? My appearance to "help" mortified them. They started shoveling feverishly to complete the task in as little time as possible. We finished swiftly, they thanked me and drove quickly away. Snowshoveling really brought us closer.