Winter Weather

While I love Vermont with all my heart, the winter weather is miserable.  I was watching the weather before I left New Mexico.  It was supposed to be fairly mild with no precipitation for the week.  It obviously couldn't be that easy for me.

I got home on a Sunday evening, it was humid out, but not raining.  I love the humidity.  I fly into Albany which is about an hour and a half from our house in south-western Vermont.

"Everything's covered with ice," my mom said to me as we are leaving the airport.  "Your father said to call when we get close and he'll put some salt on the deck." 

The roads weren't bad, the temperature wasn't too cold, but it had rained and then the temperature dropped, and everything was indeed covered with ice.  Icicles were hanging from the mailbox, the trees, the side of the house, and the driveway... oh our driveway, which I'm pretty sure every one of my friends has driven/slid off at some point during our high school career... it was like an ice skating rink.

After the challenge of getting me into the house when we got home (this included both my mom and dad helping me after I almost got taken out by one of our very large dogs), I stayed inside for three days.  I didn't have to go out, so why go?  It got a little warmer toward the end of the week so the terrain was not so treacherous.  I was able to go out and hang out with friends. 

Maybe I needed a reminder of how impossible winter weather is for me.  As I am considering leaving New Mexico for the east coast, I have to very strategically figure out where I can be that isn't too far from home, but also somewhere that doesn't get too much (if any) snow/freezing rain/ice.  Because I can't hack it.  It's not so much of an issue when I don't need to be anywhere, but if I had a job, had to run errands, etc., it would make it very difficult.  Just one more pain in the ass side effect of having a muscle disorder that affects your mobility.

Walking to Class

Below is another preview of The Graceful Art of Falling- due out Fall 2013!

    Lynchburg didn’t get much snow, which was good for me.  Unfortunately, I didn’t realize how much freezing rain and of course, ice, Virginia gets.  We didn’t have many winter weather days either, classes were only canceled a few times throughout my four year stay.  What was frustrating was that classes would be canceled for an inch of snow, but not when the entire campus was a sheet of ice.

    Ice and I are not friends.  When it was bad enough, I would skip class, sometimes just my morning classes until they could get the sidewalks cleared up.  I don’t know why I went to class at all on one particular day, maybe I had a test, but I can’t remember my reason for trekking out.  I only remember this day because something mortifying happened to me, and at the age of twenty, it may as well have been the end of the world.  

    Our campus had a main section called “the dell.”  This was in the center of many of the main buildings and dorms.  In the center of the dell was a circle of benches and flowers where all the sidewalks which extended from the buildings met.  This convergence of sidewalk was about half way from my dorm to the building I had class in.  Not a long walk by any means.  It was a small campus.  

     I bundled myself up and put on my winter boots which I didn’t often have to use at school. They were heavy duty boots, my parents wouldn’t have it any other way, they had a thick rubber sole with strong grips meant for walking on ice and snow.  I stepped out the front door of the third floor in Tate Hall and noticed that everything was covered in ice.  Wonderful!, I thought.  It was obvious that someone had made a pretty feeble attempt to throw sand down.  I can’t explain my annoyance with places that use sand as a means of melting ice.  Sand gives a little bit of traction, but it quickly is washed (or wiped) away after a few people walk through it.  Being from New England, I know that the only thing that works on ice is SALT. 

    I started to walk to class.  So slowly you would think I was 110 years old.  I realized about ten feet from my dorm steps that walking in the grass would be a better idea.  Grass doesn’t usually form a solid sheet of ice like sidewalks, so I moved into the grass and continued my slow and steady pace.  When I got to the center of the dell I had to cross to the opposite length of sidewalk- there was no way to stay on the grass.  I needed to go straight across and the benches were in a wide circle around the outside.  There was nothing for me to hold on to.  I paused for a second weighing my options.  I decided to go for it.