The Blizzard of "aught-six"

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06045/655239.stm


It was a wild ride even before the Blizzard of '06

Tuesday, February 14, 2006
By Samantha Bennett


If there's one kind of tale journalists like to tell, it's the story of how they found themselves right smack in the middle of a Major Historic News Event. Pearl Harbor, the Kennedy assassination, September 11 -- there are even some who claim to have experienced the moon landing, filing from inside a crater with a pen crusted with Tang, but most have been institutionalized by now.

I happened to spend last weekend in Connecticut. That's right: I was right smack in the middle of the Blizzard of '06. (That has to be pronounced "aught-six" to sound authentically momentous yet folksy.)

If it had been up to me, I wouldn't have scheduled a reunion-type event at a New England university in February, but I was not consulted. So I took Friday the 10th off and flew up there to see my friends and do some reminiscing. The weird part is that by the time the first flakes of the mighty blizzard started to fall, I had already seen many wonders on my visit.

Friday was a lovely, mild day, and I was met at the airport by my old friend Chris. Regular readers of this column (treatment is available) may remember him as the guy who took the sting out of impending midlife last fall by purchasing a red 1986 Ferrari.

No, he didn't pick me up in the Ferrari. Don't be silly. There is no room in a Ferrari for a weekend bag. There is barely room in a Ferrari for your toothbrush and a change of socks if you hold them on your lap.

We dropped off my luggage first; then we got in the Ferrari.

Now, I am not a gearhead in the same way that I am not an ostrich, and I made fun of him for buying that car, but I have to admit: It is something to see. I couldn't believe I was actually going to go out in that car in public -- there's so little room inside, you are essentially wearing it, like some sort of traffic-stopping thong bikini with sequins and feathers and a very loud idle.

"I am not hot enough to ride in this car," I said. "I need a boob job just to be allowed to sit in it."

Of course, I was wrong about that. What I really needed was maybe a hip replacement. I didn't sit down in the car, I fell into it. You end up with your butt no more than six inches off the pavement. If you pull up next to an SUV, you can see the oil pan.

Anyway, this intrepid journalist can report that the most remarkable thing about riding around in a 20-year-old Magnum P.I.-style Ferrari is that the car's very existence is a challenge to the masculinity of every other male driver on the road. And they HAVE to pass the Ferrari. A kid in a Buick chased us for miles and passed us doing 100. His mom probably started that car the next morning and wondered what the plume of smoke was about.

That night we joined some friends for sushi, and I saw another marvel. There were five of us, so we ordered a huge boat of the best bait I have ever eaten. In the dim mood lighting, one of our party absently inserted a cube of wasabi the size of a golf ball into his mouth. Wasabi is a kind of nuclear horseradish; eating a tiny blob is like being Maced. It's miraculous that he survived.

The next evening, after much dire fanfare, the snow started. You could see right away that it was not casual snow. It was snow that was organized, disciplined and on a serious mission to bury everything on the face of the earth as quickly as possible. When it got going, it was piling up at a rate of 2-4 inches an hour.

Sunday morning I woke up and looked out the hotel-room window to see at least a foot of flakes. The local TV stations had gone to an all-snow-all-the-time format by 9:30 a.m., with an endless, dizzying crawl of canceled church services and bingo. The apocalypse was clearly at hand.

My flight back to Pittsburgh was canceled. I considered my situation: I have no car, no plane, nowhere to stay. Everything is closed and paralyzed. I have no more clean underwear. Thanks to the previous night's carousing, I must brave this adversity armed only with a life-threatening sangria headache.

And, lucky for me, good friends. Some were snowed in and one was still recovering from the Wasabi Incident, but I was rescued by four-wheel drive and comforted with food and rented movies, a place to sleep, aspirins and even a washer and dryer. All this while the TV meteorologists yammered deliriously (fun fact: nor'easter + hurricane = "norricane") and US Airways played for me its finest on-hold Muzak.

Yep, I was there. I've seen a blizzard. To be honest, the Buick was more impressive.

 

Thanks, Dennis!

In hindsight, I probably should have teed this up a bit instead of just posting it in a hurry.

Samantha (the author of the column) is a longtime friend of mine. She went to university at Yale, and lived here in CT for a number of years after graduation. Now, however, she hails from Pittsburgh, PA and writes a weekly lifestyle column for the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. And no... it wasn't my reunion, it was Sam's -- so no showing off in the Ferrari for me that weekend.

In any case, we try to see each other when she occasionally makes it back to New England, and every once in a while I become "column fodder" for her, an opportunity I'm honored to have (so far, at least...). I knew this week's installment would feature the blizzard, but had no idea the Ferrari would figure so prominently as well. Interesting to hear a woman's perspective and first impressions of an F-Car...