Butterside up: Interstate Frogger or driving in the south

It’s perplexing to see how badly many people drive.  It’s even stranger to see how they act on the main highways that traverse our country like hamster habitat tubes.

On a recent trip to sunny (and bitter cold) Florida, I had ample time to witness and experience the manner in which some people take to the highways.  At some level, I already was aware of the horrid driving skills some of my fellow road warriors exhibit.  A quick spin up to Richmond affords a driver ample examples of some of the best and much of the worst driving on the North American continent. Notwithstanding the utter disregard for common sense, speed limits, and other driver-warning signs, it’s not unusual to see a vast array of poor driving tactics employed.

Perhaps the most annoying driving skill in practice today involves the cell phone.  Besides being a danger to the driver and other people on the road, it’s just a huge distraction.  While even I have succumbed to doing this, my few experiences have assured me that it’s not something I do as common practice, condone in any manner, or suggest my children do.  But other drivers, I think, seem not to be able to function without the cell phone pushed against an ear and the other hand working the steering wheel.

What’s even worse is the astounding number of people who think they need to text while driving. I can’t text while sitting at my desk, so I have to wonder about these Mario Andretti’s of the Interstate who pay almost as much attention to the highway as they do to the keyboard and the messages they are getting and giving. Give me a break.  I suspect a good many accidents that happen today are a direct result of that kind of behavior. Everyone seems to know it is wrong, but they succumb to the habit anyway. It’s like an addiction; it’s like a video game.

So needless to say my drive through five states led me to some bizarre speculation.  Driving is like a video game?  Well, maybe so after all.  If you think about it, driving in Virginia is a lot like playing the old arcade game Frogger.  North Carolina driving resembles Space Invaders; South Carolina is, beyond a doubt, Whack a Mole; Georgia is like Pac Man; and Florida is like Centipede.  You don’t understand? Well, allow me to clear things up for you.

First of all, anyone who has driven on the Interstate highway system in Virginia, and who knows what Frogger is, can see why driving on I-95, or I-81, or I-64 or any other I-roads in this state, is like Frogger.  First of all, it starts at the on ramp.  Why is it that some people don’t understand the meaning of acceleration lane?  The on ramp, on any highway, is designed to allow you to get up to the prevailing running speed that matches what the traffic is doing at the time.  When you get up to speed, you simply find an appropriate spot and slide your vehicle into the 70 MPH line of moving vehicles.

That seems easy enough, and on most days that’s how it goes. But like Frogger, which changes the speeds of the lanes and the spacing of objects in the lanes, the highways can pose some intimidation to certain drivers who for some reason don’t get the idea of an acceleration lane, or worse yet, wait until the very last second before they decide they need to be in the “slow” lane or risk becoming an ornament on the guard rail.  At the same time, the driver on the inside lane could, out of courtesy, opt to move into the other lane allowing said first driver the opportunity to get on the highway without incident.  But they don’t always have a chance to do that, and sometimes out of perversity they just want to make it difficult for the other driver and refuse to shift lanes.  That of course leads to the driver in the access lane coming to a complete halt, and causing the six or eight cars behind them to smash into each other.  By that time, and before the smashing reaches them, the first car enters the highway completely oblivious to the mess they left behind.

North Carolina driving, by comparison, is a breeze. In North Carolina the enemies, errr other drivers, seem to line themselves up in nice neat columns.  When you come in contact with them, they stay right in the column they are supposed to be in, most of the time. Every once in a while someone gets a bit antsy and tries to jump out in front of you as you are trying to pass.  But unlike other drivers (see paragraph about South Carolina), typical North Carolina drivers do their best to get out of your way before you run a bumper into their tail pipe, so to speak.

WARNING:  North Carolina is also home to drivers who believe fully in the state motto, First In Flight.  Those drivers will do their best to ensure you become the next person to following in the tradition of Wilbur and Orville. It’s not that unusual to find yourself coming back down to earth near mile marker 12 from virtually any Interstate highway after tangling with one of those types of North Carolina drivers.  The good news is they are rare, more often than not, typical North Carolina drivers do their best to assist in the flow of traffic.

There’s plenty of reasons why Pedro hangs all of those billboards, many of which can be seen more than 150 miles from South of the Border, that have nothing at all to do with accommodations or fire crackers.  Consider them an early warning device for those heading in a southerly direction, and a goal marker for those heading north. Like Whack a Mole, cruising the Interstates in South Carolina has more to do with dodging than it does with driving.  In fact, once you hit Lake Santee, you can expect traffic to crumble like an accordion for absolutely no known reason only to resume shortly thereafter without a hint about why the half dozen vehicles around you screeched breaks and careened onto the shoulder to avoid smashing into each other.

In South Carolina, the drivers are experts at timing exactly when a sudden lane shift will cause the absolute most disruption to the flow of traffic.  Here’s how it goes. You are in a line of traffic doing 80 mph, a clean 10 mph over the speed limit which the troopers allow.  In the right lane, cars are traveling around 70 mph, I say around because some people are traveling a smidgen slower. As you get close to someone who is doing 70 that is approaching someone who is doing 69, the person doing 70 decides it is time to pass the slower moving vehicle. Despite having had ample opportunity to take advantage of optimum spacing between vehicles for the past half mile, the 70 mph driver instead chooses to pull out into the faster lane in front of you. They do so with no concern about the speed differential and the consequential need to jam on brakes, which leads to the accordion effect explained earlier.

What a pleasure it is to leave South Carolina’s two lane, high-speed rat nest of a highway and enter Georgia.  In Georgia, I 95 spreads to three lanes, and the traffic flow is much, much better. In fact, driving in Georgia is just like playing Pac Man.  As you head down the highway, and especially if you are driving a VW Bug, you quickly gobble up broken white lines as you zip along on the last leg to sunny Florida.

The only problem people have driving in Georgia is the Georgia Highway Patrol. Now, these patrol people aren’t really that bad, but since they have these wide expanses of macadam, they are a little bit less inclined to allow high-speed driving.  No, even they allow drivers to average 10 mph over the marked speed limit, but don’t do 11 over.

The shoulders of I-95 in Georgia are chock full of examples of people driving at 81 MPH.  In fact, the GHP hang out, just like Inky, Blinky, Pinky, and Clyde, and wait for the unsuspecting drivers from up north.  No doubt you have seen them stopped along the sides of the road, lights-a-flashing, heads-a-bobbing, pens-a-writing.

That brings us, at last, to the sunny state of Florida.  Florida is by far the easiest driving on the Interstate system, mostly because no one obeys the speed limit and all the people who have headed there over the years has forced the state to create massive highways capable of handling an enormous number of vehicles. Driving in Florida most closely resembles that old video game Centipede.  Centipede involved building a line of centipieces [sic] together and continuing to move around the “game board” without either running into an enclosed box of your own making, or a nearby wall.

In Florida, it is very easy to develop a “tail” of cars traveling at whatever speed suits your fancy.  Anytime day or night, the masses are more than happy to pull in behind you and let you lead the way to the next destination, whether that be the Disney, Cape Canaveral, the Everglades, or just Lake Okeechobee.  Despite the seemingly easy sailing, you always have to be aware of how a long tail can affect what’s going on. It’s very easy for a driver to get caught up in leading the way and miss their exit. This creates a huge traffic jam as the driver attempts to get off the highway, only to make a U-turn to get back on the highway going in the opposite direction.  Typically, the long tail of the Centipede breaks down at that point and the driver reaches his desired destination without further incident.

Next year, I think I will drive up north.

Butterside up: Wingnuts-Anarchy at its softest

After having lived in areas where anarchy was more than just some passing fancy, it’s interesting to see a group of anarchists who appear, on the face of all things, to be pacifists and to have more in common with the commune communities of the 60’s than they do with the likes of La Brigatta Rosa or those associated with Charles Manson.

I don’t want to take anything away from what Mo Karn and her group, the Wingnuts, have accomplished or are in the midst of accomplishing in Richmond. In truth, they should be lauded for their efforts toward turning around a community. Their residence, on Barton Avenue, is in one of the tougher areas of Richmond, and they are making their presence for good known.

But when I think of anarchists, my thoughts drift to a lot meaner a group of people.  While I was living in Italy, back in the mid-to-late 70s, there was a group there called La Brigatta Rosa, or the Red Brigade.  The Red Brigade were known for bombings and knee-capping and creating all kinds of unrest.  They were, by definition, anarchists. They key to being an anarchist is not just to be anti-government, but being anti-government in a big violent way.

Upon my arrival in Italy, we flew in to Naples.  Needing a break from the long flight, I got off the plane and walked around in the little customs area we were allowed to be in. Outside the gates was what was left of a 500 Fiat that looked burned out.  I was told that the car was blown up by members of the Red Brigade.

That kind of thing was new to me, but I registered the idea and went about my business.  Later, when I was stationed in Verona, which is between Milan and Venice in the northern part of Italy, I started to hear and read more about the Red Brigade’s doings.

It seemed almost daily that there were incidents.  Big corporation officers had to watch out every time they were on the streets. In one incident that took place in Bologna, a Red Brigade gunman drove up next to one corporate magnate and shot him in the knees with a pistol and drove off.

That kind of terrorism became so effective; they started calling the attack a knee capping.  The injuries didn’t usually cause death, but they did hobble the person, often making them need a cane or other device just to walk.

The worst came when they kidnapped Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro on March 16, 1978.  For months, no one could find him. No one had any idea where he was.  The Red Brigade demanded the release of 16 Red Guard prisoners in exchange for Moro’s life.  They didn’t get the exchanges, and Moro’s body was found May 9; he had been shot 11 times in the chest.

Now, that’s what anarchists are capable of doing.

Even here in the US we have had our share of anarchists, the Black Panthers, and to some extent Charles Manson and his group.  So, it’s hard for me to rationalize anarchy and craft nights, feeding the hungry, and providing books and a library for kids to read.

On the other hand, the Cop Watch thing is interesting.  As one who knows about the Freedom of Information Act, it’s interesting to see it being put to use by the general public.  Posting the information on the website is also probably a good thing.  The police would much rather not let anyone know what they are about, how they do their investigating, or what really happens during certain investigations.  This is not a wiki leaks operation where the information is acquired in some dubious fashion (probably illegally) and posted for the world to see with the main intent to cause embarrassment and in some cases to endanger other people’s lives.

Police work is not always as clean and cut and dried as it appears in the myriad of cop shows that infest the general TV networks today.  A little bit of clarity on their part would go a long way in terms of police and public relations.  To serve and protect can mean a lot of different things, and the actions of many people can be covered over by invoking such open ended statements. I mean, just who is being served and who is being protected?  The general public?

Ultimately, I guess it’s OK if you want to call yourself an anarchist.  And, by a stretch the Wingnuts are working outside the norms of our society, and I suppose at some level that’s rebellion against the status quo.  Hopefully, they will continue to have a positive effect in the community, and will continue to use their powers only for The Good.

America's Scandals are (Literally) Cartoonish

In the United States it never seems to fail that someone somewhere is involved in some kind of sex scandal. Bad enough when a president, senator, or congressperson gets called on the carpet for errant peccadilloes, but things are getting really out of hand when the law suits start piling up against cartoon characters.

Now, I am not talking about people who are in cartoons, like Pee Wee, or Bozo, or name that legislator.  I am talking about bonafide, died-in-the-wool, cartoon characters, like Donald Duck. It seems that said Mr. Duck did in fact fondle a parade viewer while passing by during a character parade at Disney’s Epcot Center theme park.  Don’t believe me? Go Google it yourself; this is after all the USofA where the illogical and unlikely occur with abandon.

Apparently the woman took the initial nudging in stride, choosing to laugh about it instead of making it a Federal case.  After all, said Duck has no visible source of income, and it is highly unlikely that a civil suit would be appropriate against a cartoon.

But little did the victim suspect that the encounter would leave her with post-traumatic stress.  She began to have nightmares of Donald pursuing her through the open fields and round and round the inside of the geodesic dome that is the very symbol of Epcot. Such nightly events stoked up her stomach and more ailments began to arise. Some of those ailments, apparently, have become permanent injuries.

Initially content to let bygones be bygones, the victim then found out that lo and behold Disney has been covering up all sorts of fondling incidents involving Disney cartoon characters.  This one, involving the fun loving and glib talking Donald, she found out, is merely another in a long series of such complaints.

While reading this missive on the Internet the other day, it awakened in my subconscious another time when such fondling involving one of my sons and none less than the great Mickey Mouse himself.  I know, some of you are thinking I just want in on this to make it a class action suit, but let me assure you nothing could be farther from the truth.

How well I remember the events of that day.  We, my whole family, had been wandering around Disney World proper all day. We had been looking for any characters we could find, and only had enough luck to find some of the lesser players in the Disney cast’s undercard. We saw Huey, Dewey, and Louie, a host of Fairy God Mothers, and a veritable menagerie of creatures great and small that have adorned Disney shows ad infinitum (without end). But we had had no luck with the bigger named characters until very near the end of our excursion.

That’s when everything started to go South or Southwest or in the wrong direction.  We noticed a huge line of people.  They were lined up in ones, twos, threes, and big clumps of family.  Here, I reasoned, has to be the domicile of one of the great Disney characters. Here must be a Goofy or a Donald or a Tigger or even just a Pooh Bear.  Secretly, I thought it might be Mickey, because the number of people waiting in line seemed absolutely stupendous.  No one, I thought, other than perhaps Lindsay Lohan leaving the Betty Ford Clinic, could command such a crowd.

How exhilarating it is to find that one is right in an assumption.  No, it wasn’t Lindsay, but it was indeed Mickey.  We opted to wait out the line and have our two boys get up close and personal with the big-mouth Mickey.  Needless to say, we were on pins and needles just waiting for that moment when we could enter the door to his abode and rest our tired eyes on the Mick! You would have been excited too, admit it.

Once inside, we realized that we had almost as long to wait as we had already waited, since the queue ran completely around the room twice before actually getting near the mouse.  By the time we got up to him, the boys were antsy and we were ready to get it over with and head out to escape Disney World and find solace in our hotel room.

We waited as the line dwindled.  Inside, you had a much better idea of how quickly people were getting a hug from Mickey and moving on down the road. Suddenly, like a tsunami, we were about to meet Mickey arm-and-arm.  But things did not go as planned. In fact, my oldest son, 10 at the time, almost immediately started to scream.  At first, I just thought it was nerves. But it quickly became obvious the Big Mickey had pulled my son’s hair.  Certainly, nothing I did could have caused that high sounding caterwaul to issue forth from young tender child’s lips?

I was aghast, to say the least.  The memory of that day, now that I have been reminded of it, haunts me still.  I find it hard to eat or drink or sleep. Currently, I am running a full week with no sleep.  Certainly, surely as God’s presence, this must be because of Mickey. It probably isn’t helping these notes that I still haven’t had a nod or a wink nor even a snore since then.

But reading this other account, and realizing how bad those other Disney characters have been in the past, I am sure I can tag my experience along with this other suitor and drive full force to a satisfactory conclusion without even having to meet in court?

Heck, if that doesn’t work there’s always another PowerBall experience coming down the road.  I wonder if I could make a case against them for leaving me alone at the altar so often?

What's in a name? Butterside up

What’s with this name, “Butterside up,” a friend, who swears he read my blog, recently asked?
 Using today’s vernacular I told him, “It is what it is.”
 To which he promptly responded, “Huh?”

 So, perhaps, a little philosophy behind the blog might help, I mean now that we are four blogs deep it’s time to make sure that both of my readers (my wife Jackie and my cousin Mike, who chides me about formatting issues) will have some understanding about what I am really trying to do with this blog.  And, maybe I will understand what I am trying to do as well, which would give me some kind of goal other than “it’s late in the week you better write something.”

On the face of it butter side up is a term I learned a long time ago. I had a piece of toast and had applied a single-side surface coat of margarine and peanut butter on it.  Pretty content and ready to dine, I picked up the toast, only to have it slip from my fingers and land on the floor. Frustration with my lack of coordination must have settled in my face, because my mother, alive at the time, immediately queried “Butterside up?”

I remember looking at her as if she had gone crazy.  Butter side up? It was peanut butter toast. As I looked down at my breakfast, I noticed that indeed the peanut butter side was facing me.  That had two meanings to me:  1.  All was not lost with my breakfast, a quick application of the five-second rule and I was on my way, and 2.  Clean up was much easier.

So Butterside up was much better than Butterside down.  Butterside down had exactly the opposite effect, as the breakfast was unsalvageable and there was a significant mess made by the warm peanut butter.

Ahh, you’re stuck on the five-second rule, huh?  Well, I can’t say that I blame you. In this day and age, it seems like everything contains some kind of carcinogen or something that is out to get you.  Hence, the prospect of picking up a dropped piece of toast, butter side up or down, and continuing with breakfast is not one that many of us would choose to follow today. In fact, butter side anything is the first step toward trash can relief, unless you have a local dog to help with the cleanup.

The prospect of things being dropped or things not exactly flowing the way you would want them to is the idea behind my blog name.  In life, things naturally get out of sync and ideas just sort of jumble around, or at least in my head things sort of jumble around. You, my two readers, probably don’t have that problem at all. You probably move through your day with everything falling into place exactly as you planned them two or three weeks ago.

Not so for me.  Personally, I love the idea of planning things out. I love the idea of a place for everything and everything in its place. But that is not the reality I live in. That is a pipe dream in my reality.

My reality runs more like this:  my sister’s birthday is two weeks away. I think about it and even put it in my calendar.  A week later, I get a notice from my calendar that my sister’s birthday is on the weekly horizon.  Cool, I say to myself, I must get a card to send to her.

But things start to happen and I get distracted through the week. The reminder note pops up while I am in the midst of typing some important document, so I clear it from my screen and take no action, thinking all along that I will now remember to go get a card, fill it out with some pithy quotation that continues to build on our awesome relationship as brother and sister, and post the card in time to arrive exactly on her birthday.

In my mind that’s what happens.  In reality, I check Facebook and see that tomorrow is her birthday and I have no card, I have no pithy commentary, and the Post Office is closed to boot.  That’s classic Butterside down. I dropped the toast, the ball, the card, the whatever you want to call it, but in the end the job didn’t get done; at least not the way I had envisioned it.

What to do now?  No way can I get her a card in time, no way can I salvage favored brother status (that goes to Mike, again), no way can I take this negative incident and turn it into something even slightly more positive.

Then, of a sudden, I remember there are e-mail card services.  I quickly head to Blue Mountain and grab one of their “free” cards, type a few pithy lines:  “Hi Ruth, Happy Birthday, Love David” and voila’ home free, my duty done.  That’s Butterside up.  Of course, you have to remember to actually e-mail the card to the right address to make that happen, but that leaves room for improvement for next year so all’s well that ends well, after all. Happy belated birthday, Sissy.

Blue Lights (and tickets) on Temple Avenue

Wow! Here’s news to anyone who doesn’t live in Colonial Heights.  Don’t think you’re going to frolic in the Heights by having a drink or two, or three or four or, well you know.  Not only do you run a huge risk of driving impaired, but the odds are you won’t make it to the I-95 entrance ramp before you become the next Blue Light special for the CHPD.

In 2008, CHPD wrote no fewer than 407 tickets for driving under the influence (DUI), and a total of 12,308 tickets.  That’s a lot of tickets, I don’t care who you are.  By comparison, the city has fewer than 18,000 residents, which means two out of every three residents could have gotten a ticket in 2008.  If that doesn’t bring it home, how about this? If you happen to be in a line somewhere, the person in front of you and in back of you might have been ticketed, that is of course, providing you didn’t receive a ticket yourself in which case only one of them probably got a ticket. On the other hand, if you had gotten two tickets, then they are probably both safe.

The figures for 2009 show a decided drop off.  For the year, the CHPD only wrote 333 DUI tickets, which averages out to about one per day except Sundays.  Overall tickets also showed a noticeable drop off falling nearly by 1,000 from 12,308 to a miniscule 11,386.

Another interesting tidbit of information from the CHPD’s annual report shows that despite the improvements at the Temple Ave and Interstate 95 on-off ramp, it still manages to top the list of potential accident sites at local intersections:  in ’99 the CHPD recorded 73 crashes at the intersection, which is 12 more than the 61 recorded at the Dimmock Parkway and Temple Avenue intersection. Interestingly enough, both intersections already have traffic lights.  But people tend to jump the lights, or continue through even when they have obviously changed from green to amber to red.  Parking lots actually see the most car crashes, but car crashes in parking lots get lumped into the one category so it’s hard to say which parking lot is the most dangerous.

One day a short time ago, I did see a driver get his comeuppance at the Dimmock-Temple avenue intersection. Despite my own desire to run the light and thereby save myself several seconds before I reached the next road block, er, I mean traffic signal, I watched as a person pulled out of Dimmock Parkway to make a left onto Temple Avenue.  Unbeknownst to him, there was a full-blown CHPD police car sitting in the U-turn lane to my left (and the main reason I wasn’t about to run the light, I’m only marginally stupid ask my wife).  As he approached the middle of the intersection, my light turned green and off I scooted. In my rearview, I noticed the patrol car pulling out and the blue lights starting to whirl.  Sometimes the police are where you need them when you need them.

The report also states that the CHPD has 50 uniformed officers.  At any given moment, we can expect to see at least four patrol cars prowling the byways and highways of Colonial Heights. By now, most residents know their local haunts and where they are likely to lay in wait for a speeder, or scoff law, or the next DUI arrest, and most probably either steer clear of those areas, or just plain follow the laws. Strange that someone might actually respond to such coverage by being good, but I suppose it happens sometimes.

That brings rise to another question.  Given the state of the economy, are we getting the bang for our buck from the number of officers we have roaming the streets.  In 2008, the City Budget included about $450,000 in funding from the courts for fines, fees, and confiscated items.  No one at the city could tell me how those funds broke down.  I suppose the courts would probably be able to break down where the money came from, but I am not that interested in finding out. Still, it does seem like a pretty good way to offset the cost of policing.  Of course, I personally didn’t pay any of those fines from 2008, so for me it’s no harm no foul.

We live in a city that’s fairly safe.  Yes, we have a few crimes here and there, and yes the police appear to be Johnny-on-the-spot when handing out tickets, but do we really need to be policed at that level?  The police would be the first to tell you that, while the residency is just under 18,000, the city easily swells to twice that number or more daily due to the retail centers in and around Southpark Mall.  And, it’s not like the patrols haven’t had an effect, look at the ticket numbers, not all of those people are innocent.  For the record, the patrol officers have made some pretty good arrests, such as the bank robbers they caught on Ellerslie Avenue, the people that robbed the Subway at Southpark Crossings, and the accident on Conduit between the Home Depot and Sheetz that required Med flight to save the life of one of the victims.

But it still seems like we collect a lot of tickets.  Don’t believe me? Ask your neighbor, or his neighbor, or another neighbor.  Anyway you look at it, even with 1,000 less than last year, 11,000 tickets is an awful lot of writing.  I hope the officers don’t develop carpal-tunnel syndrome and send the medical insurance costs through the roof.

Of snow and SOLs

Living with a school teacher can sure make you do some strange things. Aside from being a buffer for the seemingly continuous “We need to pass our SOLs” laments, there’s the difference in how we look at weather.

Take for instance this recent spate of snow days.  Last Thursday, as I was walking the dogs and getting ready for my quick drive to Fort Lee and my real-time job, I was wondering what it was that drove the localities to call it quits hours before the slightest hint of the fluffy white stuff was anywhere to be found?

Growing up in the midst of snow country, it has always seemed strange to me how quickly things shut down in Virginia whenever the National Weather Service issues a winter storm warning.  That’s not to say they shouldn’t be issuing such warnings. Not at all. Knowing the bad weather is coming is a good thing; knowing what to do about it is something completely different.

My view of snowy weather is much different from most people. Even those people who live in high accumulation areas, like Buffalo, NY, home of the notorious “Lake Effect” snow storms that dump huge quantities of snow all over the place, jamming the highways, shutting down everything, and leaving people to survive alone in their cars for days on the Interstates.  My experience with snow is on a much more personal and deeper (pardon the pun) level.

Coming out of an area that is more well-known for people sleeping for 20-years, see Rip Van Winkle, few people are aware of a place called Hunter Mountain Ski Bowl.  Growing up in the middle of the Catskill Mountains, Hunter Mountain is the biggest employer of local high schoolers in the area.  In my time, I was a ski fitter, a car parker, a Red Cross-certified life guard (don’t ask, don’t tell), and eventually a snow maker.

What is a snow maker, you ask? Hunter Mountain is located conveniently two hours north of New York City, which makes it a great escape for those confined to the city limits during the week.  On any given day, really, skiers could call in sick at work and in a couple hours be slipping and sliding down the mountain without a care for work schedules, commuter traffic, or when the last train heads out to Long Island.

Hunter Mountain earned its reputation as a ski Mecca by guaranteeing 100 days of skiing per year. To my knowledge at that time, they had never been open less than 120 days for skiers, which made their season passes a big deal. Even though they were north of New York and 1,500 feet above sea levels, they would not have been able to make that claim had it not been for their early involvement in the practice of snow making.

Long before it became common, Hunter Mountain developed the pipelines and techniques that enabled it to make the 100-plus days guarantee that made the ski slope very profitable. Relying on Mother Nature to cover the trails with the white stuff would not have been a sure thing. But putting the white stuff on the mountain on your own, and only requiring enough cold to freeze water, was the right kind of deal.  For the record, you can actually make snow at 34 degrees, it tends to be a bit slushy, but it isn’t water and you can ski on it.

How it’s done is another matter. But suffice to say that air pressure and enough water volume combine to put out a spray of water droplets that freeze on contact with the sub-freezing temperatures.  So you don’t have to wait for a snowstorm to come in. In fact, on virtually any given night in the village of Hunter, you can look at the ski slope and see what appear to be huge bands of fog or low clouds. Rest assured, it isn’t fog, it’s snow and the work of snow makers.

Now, what does snowmaking have to do with SOLs and the woes around my house?  That is after all the only real question we need to answer here. And this is how that works.  Since I already know how to make snow, not trying to usurp any of the Big Man’s authority, it would seem to me that I can make a much nicer home atmosphere for myself by merely putting into practice some of those old skills I learned back in the early ‘70s.  To wit, when my wife is longing for another day off, I could simply create a few new devices and tie into local fire hydrants. It wouldn’t take too long to get things going and voila’ it would be instant day off.

To me, it seems win-win. Especially since snow doesn’t usually keep me from going to work.

Dispatch from the Potato Drop

Feeding the hungry in the Tri-City area is more about working together than it is about anything else. Currently, there are many programs available to help feed those in need.  Many churches and organizations sponsor food banks or feeding programs that help those who would otherwise miss a meal here or there, or even more often than that.

The state of the local economy—I think everyone knows several people who are out of work and who have been out of work for some time—puts added pressure on these groups to provide more and more food for the needy.  About two weeks ago three local churches split the fuel cost to have a truck load of potatoes hauled in from Maine.  The project, coordinated through the Society of Saint Andrews, provides truck loads of potatoes for redistribution to food banks, church feeding programs, and any other groups that help feed the hungry.

They do this by working with local church groups who organize what they call a Potato Drop.  The truck rolls in early on the morning of the drop, and a small group of people meet to unload the pallets full of potatoes.  Later that morning, volunteers arrive from all sorts of groups, churches, scouts, and neighbors.  They help redistribute the potatoes form 50-pound bags into bags weighing approximately 10-pounds apiece.  The smaller bags are then sorted and stacked in piles for different groups to pick up.

This potato drop was sponsored by the United Methodist Men (UMM) from Wesley, Ivey, and Highland United Methodist churches in Colonial Heights.  UMM members from the three churches met at five in the morning Dec. 4^th just in time for the truck that came in from Maine.  The truck contained 900, 50-pound bags of potatoes.  It took only a short time to unload the truck, using a donated fork lift and pallet jack.

A few hours later, volunteers started to show up for the repackaging effort. At first, the volunteers gathered round a group of four tables pushed together.  Soon, there wasn’t enough room and more tables were added. Not long after that, the big table was split into two tables, and a third set of tables were brought in to handle the influx of volunteer help.

In all, it took just over two hours to redistribute the potatoes.  In all, over 100 people were involved in the potato drop, and 22 different groups benefited from the potatoes.  Dutch Garrett, the project manager and former UMM President from Highland United Methodist Church (UMC), said it wasn’t surprising to have so many volunteers, considering all three churches were involved and had advertised the date.

Wesley UMM President Rich Pingel was quick to point out that the churches had been trying to get a potato drop for the past couple years, but a shortage of potatoes and the cost of trucking them out of Maine were serious road blocks.  This year, Pingel and Garrett decided to bite the bullet and come up with the $2,000 needed for fuel costs.  At a meeting to discuss the drop, Ivey UMM President Clay Edwards said his organization would also contribute to the fuel costs.

“Once we put up the money, it was just a matter of scheduling a date for the drop,” Pingle said.

On another front, Highland United Methodist Church’s Wednesday night community supper is celebrating an anniversary.  The program got its start a year ago, and served only a few people initially. But recently, they have been averaged feeding more than 60 people per night. The meals are not extravagant, and usually involve some form of a casserole, bread, and salad. Water, tea, and coffee are also provided at no cost. It is non-denominational and non-secular. Anyone is welcome to attend.