Snow Archives

November 28, 2013November 29, 2013

Through the Mountains

I hated not being home for Thanksgiving, but I liked the empty roads the holiday presented me. I had a pleasant day’s drive through the mountains in West Virginia and Virginia.

Jan was driving last time

I pretty much missed seeing the mountains the last trip through there with Friend Jan.

A. It was at night.
B. I was asleep because I found the best way to be a passenger when Jan is driving is to have your eyes closed.

I wish I had done a better job with these. It’s hard balancing the camera on the steering wheel while you’re rocketing downhill on a twisty road. If I had been able to adjust the polarizing filter and diddle with the zoom and exposures, these would have been more interesting. As it was, I just pointed and pushed the button.

Photo Gallery

Click on any photo to make it larger, then click on the sides to move through the gallery.

November 26, 2013

Athens Winter Storm Video

If you’ve been following my travel saga on Facebook, you’ve heard me worrying about the weather. Well, the winter storm caught up with me in Athens, Ohio, Tuesday.

Temperatures hovered just above the freezing mark all day, so I got to splash around in cold, miserable rain that was trying to make up its mind. When I sat down to dinner, it was raining with an occasional flake mixed in. Just as I started to get up, I pulled up the weather ap on my tablet. It was clear from looking at the amateur weather stations that the line of 32-degree temps had just hit us.

I called Wife Lila to tell her that huge flakes of the catch-em-on-your-tongue variety were falling from sky.

“Take pictures,” she said

“Take pictures,” she said. “That’s cool.”

“You don’t understand,” I tried to explain to someone in Florida, “the SNOW is cool to look at, but the air it’s riding in is COLD.”

“Take pictures anyway,” was her response. “Shoot video.”

“Yes, Dear,” was my response (as it should have been the first time she asked. I’ve been away from home so long my reaction time has gotten slow).

The video is pretty neat

OK, I’m glad she made me do it. The picture at the top of the page is a screen grab from the 37-second video. That’s why it’s not as sharp as if I had taken it with my Nikon still camera.

October 25, 2013

What’s the White Stuff?

When I heard someone say, “It’s snowing outside,” I thought they might have meant that some tiny frozen pellets might be falling from the sky Thursday afternoon. No, this was the Real Deal looking down Court Street in Athens, Ohio.

Jessica captures flakes

Curator Jessica was wearing dark clothes that snagged a few of the fluffy flakes. You’ll see more of her over the next 10 days or so. For some reason, she doesn’t believe everything I’ve written about Cape, so she wants to see it for herself.

I’ve already warned her not to stare at Mother’s arm. I am not prone to exaggerate. (I can do it standing up, too.)

A view up Court Street

Jessica and Friend Carol don’t waste any time when they hear the lunch bell ring. They didn’t even look back to see if I had slipped and broken a shank or something.

Didn’t accumulate

The snow turned the ground white in a few places, but it didn’t last long. October is too early for much of a snow in Athens. It was all gone by the time we finished lunch.

Tom Hodson and Carol

After lunch, it was off to the WOUB studios for a radio show with our former OU Post buddy, Tom Hodson. He’s the director and general manager of WOUB Public Media and an excellent interviewer. The show will air online Sunday. When I get a link, I’ll post it. You are not obligated to listen.

Rapt attention or pizza?

After our dog and pony show co-sponsored by the Ohio University History Association and the Athens County Historical Society and Museum, we were mobbed by students with questions about what it was like in college when women’s curfews were enforced to the second.

It was either that, or they were attracted to the pizza a student brought in.

March 2, 2013

I-55’s Big Rock Cut

If you are in a family where the Dad builds roads and bridges for a living, going for a ride is a whole lot different than it is for most families.

For one, Dad would slow to a crawl anytime he passed another contractor’s job so he could see what techniques the guy was using. If his competitor had some kind of new, spiffy piece of equipment, he’s say, “I wish I had his and he had a better one.”

We couldn’t make a trip from Cape to St. Louis without him pointing this area out as “one of the biggest rock cuts on I-55 in Missouri.”

By the time I got to St. Louis on February 25, those clouds were dropping snow from the sky. After I finished my exhibit in Ohio and drove back to Cape from St. Louis on March 1, more clouds were causing snow to swirl across the road.

What IS it with snow this year? It seems like everyplace I’ve gone lately has had snow. I’m afraid to go back to Florida next week for fear I’m going to cause it to snow on Wife Lila’s new vegetable gardens.