Boston got its first messy splash of snow last night, with two inches of the white stuff followed by a day of steady drizzle. I woke up this morning to the sound of snow shovels steadily scrapping the sidewalk, and I sighed contentedly at this quintessential sound of winter. Then, an ungodly noise ripped through the calm. Shit. One of the neighbors has a snow blower.
The snow complicated the first day of my new commute. I now take a regular Boston subway line into the downtown instead of the blood-pressure-ratcheting commuter rail. To get to the subway, I must walk for 25 minutes on a dedicated bike path. Including the walk from the subway to my office, that’s more than an hour of walking a day. With such an active commute, I’m forgoing a gym membership and investing in fashionable weather-proof gear.
For now, all I have is my rugged hiking boots, which did serve me well as I trotted through the slush on the bikepath this morning. Reportedly, there’s vicious feuds between the various clans of mobility that crowd the path (bikes versus feet versus bladers versus dog walkers). There are admonishing signs every 100 feet: Keep to the right of the path! Today though, I had the path all to myself, which was good because I couldn’t tell left from right from middle.
Whatever your natural feelings are about snow, they are intensified during the year’s first snowfall, even if it’s a paltry two inches that dissipated in the rain by the time you hit the streets. Many of my co-workers stayed home. One who braved it to the office told me “I had to get out of my house. My sons are going bonkers.”
Me, I agree with Calvin and Hobbes: Getting an inch of snow is like winning 10 cents in the lottery.
