10. New York state when it snows is freakin' GORGEOUS. New York City is magic in winter, Niagara Falls looks like something out of The Lord of the Rings, the countryside looks for all the world like the cover of The Saturday Evening Post from halfway through the last century - everything takes on the winter's effect. All of the colors seem to fade to shades of grey and white, and there are times at night where you can be away from all artificial light and if you wanted to, you could read by the light of the moon reflected off of the snow. The whole world seems transformed.
9. Driving. This might seem like a negative, but it's not. When you learn to drive in a place where everyday travel is downright treacherous for almost half of the year, it leaves you prepared for just about anything you encounter behind the wheel. You don't wind up freaking out, losing your shit, and crashing into things if it should happen to rain or something like they do in Los Angeles. Plus, you haven't lived until you've taken a four wheel drive vehicle out for a little snowbank surfing and some monster donuts in a frozen parking lot.
8. Shovelling. This too, might sound like a negative, but it's not. The walk from my front door to the sidewalk is two hundred feet, and I have to shovel the sidewalk in front of my house, too. If I don't clear the sidewalk, the city fines me a hundred bucks. Whatev, panda bear. Almost every morning in the winter, I get up, I drink a cup of coffee, and I shovel the walk, and then I shovel the sidewalk in front of the house. Most days I do this multiple times. Again, this might sound like a real pain in the ass, but it's not. It gives me a minute to clear my head. I focus on the task at hand, because it has to get done regardless of how I feel about it, and before I know it, I'm thinking about nothing at all, in an almost meditative state until the job is finished. It's cathartic. Besides that, all an enterprising kid needs to make some nice money when it snows is a shovel and a neighborhood full of generous/lazy neighbors.
7. Having a guy on the news reporting on the weather is slightly less ridiculous when there is actual weather for him to talk about. I can do the L.A. weather for an entire year right now in three sentences: It's going to be hot and sunny. After that it will be really hot and sunny. Later it will be sunny but slightly less hot, and then for about two weeks in December it's going to rain like every other day or so. People in Los Angeles barely notice any earthquake less than a six on the Richter scale, yet the slightest mist in the air will have the L.A. basin reacting as though the apocolypse is upon them and the battle of armageddon is taking place on Wilshire Blvd. They throw big graphics and sound effects at you on the news. STORM WATCH 2011!!! SHKKKKA-POW! At least here there are actual storms to watch.
6. Having snow in winter splits the year up nicely. There is a rhythm to the year that having four distinct seasons brings, and it is incredibly noticeable in its absence. Before I came back to New York, I can remember conversations that went something like this: Someone would say something like "Hey, remember when that thing happened? What year was that?" and then I'd have to think to myself "OK who won the World Series that year? Chicago. So that was '05..."
I don't have to do that now.
5. Sledding. The ballsiest surfer on the west coast has nothing on an 8 year old in western New York with an inflatable Sno-Cat tube. That kid is going to go flying down a hill approaching light speed, only to fly eight feet in the air when he hits the three foot jump which his older brothers, unbeknownst to him, built right in his path while he was walking up the hill.
4. Throwing snowballs at cars. Show me a dude from an area of the country that gets snow in winter, and I'll show you a former delinquent who has chucked snowballs at passing cars from behind a snowbank under cover of night. I'd bet you green money that each of these dudes has been chased by an angry driver, has hidden out beneath a parked truck hoping that his visible breath didn't give him away, and has been caught on more than one occassion. This entire exercise, so long as you don't get caught, is incredibly fun. My brother Mark used to call it "eating pizza", as in "Hey, Mark. Where are you going?" "Oh nowhere, Mom. I'm just going to go over to Ryan's house and eat pizza."
3. You know how much hot cocoa (often with Kaluha) they drink in the Ghobi desert? None, that's how much.
2. Christmas. Standing in line for a Christmas tree in the parking lot of a Home Depot while wearing shorts, flip flops, a wife beater and sunglasses when it's eighty degrees out is bullshit. Besides that, the "Christmas season" seems to hang around longer when there's snow on the ground. In December, my house looks like a Christmas postcard. Your house looks exactly like it always does, except there are some lights.
1. Snow days. You wake up super early in the morning having gone to bed the night before with the knowledge that a killer storm was going on. Grandma E.J. turns on the radio, and you eat your cereal wondering whether you'll spend your day stuck beneath flourescent lights inside a classroom doing boring schoolwork, or tearing ass through the backyards, woods, and playgrounds in your neighborhood. You think of all the other kids who are no doubt putting their snow pants and mittens on right now because the news guy has already called out their school on the list of closings. It seems like it takes forever, and you've almost given up hope when on the second time through the list you hear "Southwestern." You power down the rest of your cereal, jump into your snowsuit, grab your Han Solo and Chewbacca action figures and your Millenium Falcon, and for the next two hours, your backyard is a fully immersive Planet Hoth playset. You go back inside and eat lunch. You go up to the high school to go sledding because that's where the biggest hill is, and you see who can get the most air with their Sno-Cat. You spend all day in the snow, with periodic warmups back at your house, often including hot chocolate while you wait for your mittens to dry on the radiator. You do all of those things that you wish you could do while you're staring out the window and pretending to pay attention in school. No snow, no snow days. Snow days rule.
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Sunday, October 30, 2011
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