Ten 'Eek" Snow Moments.

* Essentially, these are moments, experienced in snowy conditions, that cause an 'eek' to be omitted from your lips—simple, yes?

1. Driving, at night, on a freeway—sixty mile per hour limit—in a snow storm. Luckily the traffic all slowed to about fifteen miles per hour, but poor V—— still had to hang out the window to try and direct me as I was unable to see the lines on the road. Merging and exiting were especially eek-y.
2. Driving, at night, on inches of snow, with feet of snow either side of you, through Washington DC, without a map. And, then having to try and get out of the way of a fire engine. How could there be a fire in that weather? Must be a 'trapped'.
3. Being the last two people waiting for a train at the otherwise completely deserted airport, and just managing to catch the last Metro train before they close all overground stations due to the blizzard warning. What Blizzard Warning? Now you tell us!
4. Taking a gamble on the interpretive directions to the hotel and leaving the Metro station. Turns out it was two stops two early and we had to walk ten blocks in the un-warned about blizzard with all our luggage.
5. Having no eating options but the Irish restaurant at the bottom of our hotel. The food was lousy. The coffee was terrible. And because it was the only place open in the then knowable universe, the staff were particularly disgruntled that they had to come to work when every other waitperson in the world was at home on the couch watching pay TV. I lie about eating options though—we did have a particularly yummy soup at McDonalds. There are so many combinations there that don't usually meet in a sentence: McDonalds and soup, McDonalds and yummy.
6. Having nothing to do in DC. The shops are closed—except for one camping type store that sold hats and gloves (thank goodness, mine were inadequate). The museums are closed. All we could do was go out in the blizzard to see a famous white building against a backdrop of snow. The White House, when compared to the white of snow, is actually the Cream House.
7. Snow means cancelled trains. Our 0830 train was cancelled when we rang the night before to check. They rescheduled us on the 0910. When we arrived at the stations, the 0910 was cancelled, but the cancelled 0830 was departing, but delayed. I think we ended up catching the 0800 at 0940, which went to the same places as the 0830 and replaced the cancelled 0940. That makes perfect sense doesn't it? Eek.
8. Snow becomes Ice. Although New York had more snow delivered, its streets were much clearer. My hypothesis: the ambient temperature of eight million people, and the fact that, unlike DC, it can't just close down, and so has a better snow infrastructure, has a lot to do with it. But what snow it does have quickly turns to ice; everyone walks through town like a duck in a mopped kitchen.
9. It is infinitely harder than it seems to make a snowball. Movies can't use real snow. Why is nothing in life like it is in the movies? How do movies get away with such whopping lies?
10. Snow means cancelled planes. Here we go again. Our 1330 plane was delayed to 1800, which means we would have arrived in LA at 2145 to connect to our international flight at 2200. That later got re-delayed to 1900, arriving 2245. We got ourselves rescheduled on a 1715 getting us there at 2100: we had one hour to collect luggage, change terminals and re-check for our onward flight. It is now that you start to think the extra thousand dollars for the through journey on one airline would have been worth the money. The wind was behind us. We arrived one hour early into LA and had plenty of time. We then sat on the runway for about, um, ever, and didn't leave LA until closer to 2300. It didn't even snow there.

Disclaimer: I would still rather have snow than a Melbourne summer any day. Any day!