Fluffy Mayhem

I set my camera up for a time-lapse of the blizzard. Since last week was the 'Snownami' and 'Snowmageddon' this storm seemed to get christened 'The Blizzard of Oz.' Though we got nothing from what I heard compared to the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles from the same storm. I heard on NPR last night they actually pulled in the plows because it wasn't safe for them to be out on the road. That's a bad blizzard.



I've been having a lot of fun with the interval thing on my D7000, shot a couple of time lapses from the last snowpocalypse (another nom de guerre you hear in Kansas City, a place which gets snow so rarely that even a dusting inspires people to think of the End Times). I charged the battery up and had a couple of false starts setting up the deal. Nothing was happening, the snow that was supposed to hit at three in the afternoon was then supposed to hit at seven was then supposed to hit at eleven and I don't know. It was around midnight when I gave up and just let the camera do its thing.



My phone rang at 7:30, my boss telling me there was no power at the shop so don't bother coming in.



He needn't have worried, I'd already decided that if the storm did anything like what was projected, I was sitting this one out. I got my desk extra caught up before I left yesterday and it's not like there's a lot of walk-in traffic for a print shop on a day such as this.



If I was going to make an attempt, it would either be by bicycle or bus I'd decided. No point getting my little xB stuck in the path of a snow plow and towed off.



I'd figured I'd go back to bed and sleep in but the snow was too exciting, I had to go play in it. But first, of course, I had to go check on the time lapse photography project. The one I stayed up late to start. And I found a camera on a tripod utterly unresponsive. The battery had died after 275 frames, way before the neighbor's tree across the street shed a limb and before the road got deep with it. Damn. I guess I need a second battery after all: I've shot hundreds of shots in a day and marveled at the lifespan of my battery but of course I turn the camera on and off a lot on a day like that. Leaving it on all night seems to be a bit different. I guess I'd need to have that second battery and set an alarm to get up and swap it out. Maybe swap an SD card while I'm at it since even 8GB cards fill up fast when you shoot hundreds of RAWs.



Oh, and if you watch the video, that reference to Ozzy... Yeah. Since this was supposed to be the 'Blizzard of Oz' I created my video with the opening track from the album 'Blizzard of Ozz.' Yes, I knew I was violating Ozzy's sacred copyright, I just hoped I was violating it on such a small scale that it wouldn't matter, but apparently Google/YouTube's attorneys and code monkeys have conspired to make that impossible. I love that album, Randy Rhoads is in my top two or three all time rock & roll guitarists and I bought that sucker legit on vinyl (dropping the needle on that record on my Dad's hi-fi was one of my formative experiences, true story) and CD so I guess I feel entitled to use 90 seconds of it for a half-baked time lapse video without being called out for it. But I guess not, so I let YouTube sub some generica garbage soundtrack on there rather than let the snow fall in the all-too-realistic-silence.



The bike did so-so going downhill on my street but uphill was pointless. I literally couldn't make the thing roll forward pedaling, I got zero traction.



So I gave up on the bike in favor of hiking to take photos. Then I remembered Corinna asking me to walk Sheba, something she knew I wouldn't do—not the way she meant. When she walks Sheba, she olds the leash in one hand while riding her bike. Sheba is a big, spastic freak and there's no way I'm up for that. Even on dry pavement, she'd put me on the pavement every block or two and I don't have the same peace about falling down that Corinna has.



But walking to take pictures, that's doable. Sheba still almost pulled me over a few times looking to check out bunny holes in the snow or wanting to go meet other dogs. But she was so happy to be out in the neighborhood.





To give us a destination besides photographing the spectacularly wet, sticky snowstorm aftermath, I figured we'd go vote. The polling place where I voted in the general election last fall is only about three quarters of a mile from the house, perfect walk for a dog, right?



We got there and there's no sign of life whatsoever. Not even a footprint in the snow in front of the place.



But while we were out walking I'd noticed that once we got off our own street, the main roads were pretty well plowed and treated. And even a lot of the neighborhood had good deep ruts in it from pickups and such driving through the deep snow. So when we got back, I found out where they'd consolidated the voting to (five places in the whole county) and decided to ride there.



As I started off down my street a woman shoveling snow hollered to me to 'be careful!' Yeah yeah yeah. You hear that a lot when you cycle for transportation. My wife even has a poem about it.





But like I say, I'm not into falling so after a few slipsydoodles I walked it down to State Avenue and rode from there. Which was super easy riding, just wet pavement and hardly any traffic.



When I got to the election office, though, I stepped in a deep, cold puddle and the plans I'd been hatching for riding out on a wider adventure kind of got curtailed. Wool socks and chemical toe warmers will extend running shoes as acceptable footwear down to maybe 20ºF, but that's if you can keep them dry. I have boots, good waterproof boots that are normally what I wear for this kind of weather but they Bermuda Triangulated after the Joplin trip and several extensive efforts to locate them have failed. It's to the point where I might buy a new pair, they weren't particularly expensive as I recall.



I'm sure I'd have gotten more traction on the snow on a fat bike like my friend Joel has. His is a Pugsley, a model made by Surly that's quite popular in places like Alaska and cities that get regular lake-effect snows all winter long. They have a version now called the Moonlander with even fatter tires, almost five inches, and it would have been fun to have that much float and grip today but that's a lot of cash to tie up in a snow bike for Kansas City. It's the bicycle equivalent of keeping a Humvee just for those days every couple of years where it's handy—nothing wrong with that, but even if I could cashflow it, I'm not sure where I'd store a fleet of bikes.



But I did get to vote at least—and I figure my vote counts like two or three when the weather keeps so many people home from the poles, providing a multiplier to the already hefty weight of a vote in a strictly local primary election.





The walk did give me a renewed appreciation of my hip neighborhood. I'm not sure anyone else has defined it as such, but it fits my criteria. I live in a modest, three bedroom bungalow type thing with what a Realtor would call a one car garage but really it's an eight bike garage and we park our cars outside by the trash boats. Four doors down and three up and you're at the Senator Darby mansion which has fireplaces in all five bedrooms if I recall from the homes tour and a basement garage made for an uninterrupted presidential motorcade. Prairie school, neocolonial, plain old ranch house, our neighborhood has it all.



I passed one neighbor who was digging out a truly long driveway, to a garage way back behind the house. I was flooded with gratitude that I had less than teen feet to shovel to get my xB to the street.



As much fun as I had today, riding my bike in extremes and shooting pictures of snow with postcard qualities, I think I'm ready for spring. I could go for another foot or two of snow as far as easing the drought. Our foundation would benefit from it, not to mention our fruit trees and the garden I'm keen to get planting—in a week or two.