First real taste of winter here these past couple of days. Yesterday we got about 4 inches of snow, but it was handled extremely poorly. I think everyone thought it was going to be a dusting, so there was no pre-treating of the roads nor did they get a ton of snow plows out. Second, the heaviest hit right in the middle of the morning commute. Personally, I enjoyed it, I got to make fresh tracks on the bike trail and the train ran smoothly and on schedule. Some of the roads were so bad in DC that they shut them down to vehicular traffic but let me through on my bike!
Then, throughout the day I received a whole bunch of automated e-mails from Bella's school. The tone was super apologetic. Apparently, there had been a lot of trouble with buses navigating to pick up kids and even some minor fender benders. Naturally, people went ballistic and attacked the school for opening. I was amazed by how frank the tone of the e-mails were and how unequivocal the school was about admitting its mistake. It's always easy to look back on something in hindsight, but the fact of the matter is that the school had no better weather forecasting than the general public. The difference that just a couple of inches can make (insert dirty joke) is huge. The best part was that they called a 2 hour delay today, and they called it in the middle of the afternoon yesterday. Almost like a consolation prize. There was nothing extraordinary about today, it was pretty chilly but nothing like what is going on in the Midwest, probably high teens at the coldest. Further, it probably enraged some parents even more that count on the kids going to school at a certain time so that they can go to work.
For the crotchety old man part of the post, kids have it too easy now when it comes to school closings and delays. Most of them get text alerts or e-mails the moment the decision is made. I remember getting up in the morning and tuning the radio to the local news station. Then you had to wait for what seemed like an eternity to go through the list alphabetically of all schools. Having a school that started with the letter "S" didn't help. The most nerve-wracking part was where it looked like a 2 hour delay may turn to a closure. You would notice the clock inching ever closer to the point of no return. The point where there simply wouldn't be enough time to turn around the buses. Inevitably some of the fancier schools (I'm looking at you Scarsdale and Westchester Exceptional Children's School) would close. But, it seemed like our school liked to be the tough guy, the last one to blink in this game of chicken. What a thrill when you heard those final words of "closed" though. It was like a mini holiday. Sledding down the hill in the front yard, sometimes if it snowed enough sledding down the road that ran in front of the house! There is nothing sweeter than an unexpected vacation day!
Got my second three miler in today. My legs were a bit sore when I woke up this morning, but the run went well. On a treadmill I have trouble staying interested if I keep it at a steady pace so I like to try to increase the speed by .1 mph every minute until I can't keep it up any longer and then bring her back down and do it all over again. At my max pace I was right at 7:53 a mile, but overall average page was 8:50 a mile. One more three miler tomorrow and then a rest before the 6 miler. Hopefully it will be warm enough to run outside, that way I can run three miles one way and be forced to complete the run! Plus I figure I should get the experience of running outside.
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