Why am I so sad that I am going to miss the big storm?

Why am I so sad that I am going to miss this big NYC Blizzard?

I do like snow

But 20+ of snow is always fun in the City. It's especially interesting watching the MTA put those cable chains on the Articulated buses 24 hours in advance, so the cable are well worn or broken by the time the snow actually arrives.

Then the buses promptly get stuck after the first few inches in any case.

Articulated buses are only good to reduce the number of drivers and the quality of service. Not much else.

But I digress.

I am truly sorry I am not there. Had I been reading the forecast discussions like I used to, I would have an had an inkling a few days ago and may have even flown home for the event.

Oh well, next time.

I did pull out Jimmy Cornell's World Cruising Routes last night

Having spent many winters in Steamboat Springs skiing, snowmobiling, skating etc, I miss the winter - at times. Can't get from the Caribbean back to Steamboat for a short trip so I had to make a choice. Forget Jimmy Cornell, what I could use would be Star Trek's teleporter.

According to the weather forecasters, we in the NE are ALL GOING TO DIE! Again.

I think I will post some nice pictures of the Bahamas when it's like
Mid storm there...

Richard..QUICK!! Get a flight to Connecticut and I'll let you run the snow blower for a while!!

My tennis game in Stuart, FL was cancelled this morning due to wind and rain. And, the temperature was a freezing 58 degrees. No need to go north for me, the weather here is bad enough. Uh oh, may have spoken too soon, the sun is beginning to break through.

dwhatty said:

According to the weather forecasters, we in the NE are ALL GOING TO DIE! Again.

Click to expand...

Over the holidays we had a similar warning at our home in Sedona, AZ. To hear the forecasters on TV, one would think that we were doomed. We awakened on Dec. 24th to this, 10 inches of snow that everyone loved!

I love watching a blizzard......on my TV.

I just turned off my air conditioner on Sunday and opened up the house for some fresh air.

Going on a motorcycle ride in an hour or so to heat up the oil for an oil change.

Hey, hate the game not the player.....

77 currently. High of 85 today in Puerto Vallarta. Sorry folks....

This will be the 46th New York City winter I have avoided since moving to SOCAL. Much rather be boatin' 12 months of the year than hibernatin' with a boat I can't use.

dwhatty said:

According to the weather forecasters, we in the NE are ALL GOING TO DIE! Again.

Click to expand...

That's NOT the weather forecasters, but your little news people that want you hooked 24/7

jleonard said:

Richard..QUICK!! Get a flight to Connecticut and I'll let you run the snow blower for a while!!

Click to expand...

My Julie likes that idea also

70's and overcast today on the Phoenix area. Yesterday was 80*, sunny, just a few light clouds.

Let me see--snow vs. sunshine. Sunshine winds every time.

Stuck at home thanks to the snow.... they said we can expect 50mph wind gusts tonight?! Really, great.

... daydreaming of being back aboard....

Weather warning:

Haha! so true!!! My sister in law is already on FB post # 438 on today's weather.

Bay Pelican said:

Having spent many winters in Steamboat Springs skiing, snowmobiling, skating etc, I miss the winter - at times. Can't get from the Caribbean back to Steamboat for a short trip so I had to make a choice. Forget Jimmy Cornell, what I could use would be Star Trek's teleporter.

Click to expand...

No teleporter unfortunately but I'll still be able to give you a snow report from Steamboat next week. Happy to leave Queensland for a break, we've had several weeks of unusually hot & humid weather (typically 10ºF above average) - think Florida summers.

Marty, any places to eat for a tightwad picking up the tab for the whole extended family?

Blowing hard enough in Abaco to blow our grill off the deck! Enough of this nonsense!

Having grown up in Hawaii, in my opinion there is no such thing as too much snow. I wish what happens in New England would happen here every winter too (the snow part, not the deep freeze part as then we'd have to haul and winterize our boats instead of using them all year).

We've got the vehicles and the driving skill to deal with a major snowfall, so all we have to do is wait a day or so for all the people who don't to go into the ditch and then the driving is great.

As it is, we have to go up into the BC interior or over to Montana to get a heavy snow fix.

If I never see the sun and blue sky again, it will be just fine with me. Give me rain, snow, overcast, fog, all that stuff. Fortunately I have a wife who feels exactly the same way (she's from here).

The only thing we don't want is wind when we want to go flying, fishing, or boating. The rest of the time wind is great, too.

As my wife puts it, weather makes me feel alive and part of something exciting. I've had way more than my quota of staggeringly boring weather in Hawaii. I look at the pictures people put up on this forum of Florida and the Keys and Bermuda and the Gulf Coast and the only thing I feel is pity for the poor souls who are stuck there day after day after day after day after day after day after day......

Been there, done that, got the T-shirt. Never again.

As I've said before, to me the US stops at the southern Oregon border and the east bank of the Mississippi (I say the east bank because the river itself is pretty cool). Outside of that rectangle and Maine, the rest of the US can be given back to whoever we bought or stole it from.

Wifey B: I only want bikini weather....no snow. We lived in NC where we didn't get much. We did get some in Seattle last year. Even had a snowball fight with some young teens. If snow wasn't cold I'd want it. Warm snow, floating down as we ride down the ICW , wearing bikinis, looking at the Fort Lauderdale homes all covered.

I do feel for those who will encounter hardship from the snow. It's part of nature's beauty, but there's an ugly side too.

Marin said:

Outside of that rectangle and Maine, the rest of the US can be given back to whoever we bought or stole it from.

Click to expand...

Glad that you included us. We Mainers have always felt that we are one of the best sections of the USA and are looking forward with anticipation to the "historic" blizzard the weather casters say is headed our way.

dwhatty said:

Glad that you included us. We Mainers have always felt that we are one of the best sections of the USA and are looking forward with anticipation to the "historic" blizzard the weather casters say is headed our way.

Click to expand...

I've seen very little of Maine. My first trip was in 1978 on a solo drive up from Boston to visit the Old Town canoe company and then out to a little penninsula on the coast to visit a custom canoe maker who used to advertise in Wooden Boat magazine. This was back when I was still living in Hawaii.

A friend and I had taken a six week road trip to the Yukon to camp and fish the year before and we'd become enamored of what they called up there a "freighter canoe." Wood and canvas, eighteen or twenty feet long with a square stern for an outboard. The boatbuilder in Maine had told me he had some plans for a freighter canoe and some photos of one he'd made that he'd give me. It was wood and canvas although his specialty was making beautiful cold-molded WEST system conventional canoes.

It was incredibly foggy on the coast so most of what I saw of Maine was the line in the miiddle of the road in front of the car. But the little I was able to see thorugh the fog was very intriguing.

Second time was when the same friend I'd done the Yukon with and his wife and my wife and I took a road trip to PEI a few years ago. We stopped in Maine on the way up (from southern Virginia where my friend lives) and the way back to spend a day or two with a friend of theirs who lives on a little island near a town I can't rememer the name of but it's just south of Bath.

Ate lobsters, looked at lobster boats, talked to lobster fishermen, went to the maritime museum in Bath, and had a great time exploring the immediate area. Look forward to the time when we might be able to return and see more.

So Maine is definitely worth keeping in my geographic definition of what the US should consist of.

As for the "historic" blizzard that's on it's way, television has become so desperate to sell Fords and Bud Light and McDonalds in the face of the 6 bazillion cable and satellite channels that they will hype anything into sure-death, record-breaking, historic proportions.

Out here it's gotten to the point where if it's going to rain, the news weenies dredge up old stories of people being swept away in flooding rivers (ANY rivers, the don't have to be ones here), predicting that it can and probably will hapen to YOU, and describing tales of woe for anyone who gets caught in the historic, torrential, deadly downpour (we're talking a light rain that "dumps" perhaps a quarter of an inch in the gauge out at Seatac airport in a 24 hour period).

It's pathetic, really.

Survival tips:

Blizzard Survival Tips | The Onion - America's Finest News Source

There's something for everyone all across the U.S.
My family spent the first 12 years of my life living on a forty acre farm along a canyon creek outside of Spokane, WA on the dry side of the Cascades. It was beautiful. We had enough snow in the winter to have fun, yet always had the green evergreens for some color.
i lived about 60 to 70 miles east of Pittsburgh, PA for the next thirty some years close to the top of one of the mountains in the Allegheny Mountain range. We had hot humid summers and cold snowy winters -- enough snow days for my brother to break his leg while skiing on our farm . . . twice the same winter. Got stuck behind snowbound tractor trailers on route 22 multiple times and even had the pleasure to total a car when the hillside going down was suddenly deep slushy snow at the county line change. The other county hadn't plowed. Got mandated to stay at work multiple times during each winter when coworkers couldn't get in, lived through winter power outages, and always carried a shovel in the car -- the whole deal.
So now at this point in my life, living aboard on the ICW along the Gulf Coast in Northwest Florida is heaven. We've been here almost 14 years, made it through Ivan and other weaker storms, and have enough "weather" events to keep it interesting. If I miss the snow, I can always look at the highway cameras right above the house I used to in while in PA., and my daughter sends plenty of photos. But after getting chased off of the Allegheny River because it was too cold to fish on a suddenly cold day in August, I would much rather be somewhere where we can be comfortable on the boat year round. We love the white sand beaches of this part of the Gulf Coast. If you see them grading the beach road after a particularly windy winter storm, it looks like snow.
As I said, there's "somewhere" for everyone . . .

FLSunfish said:

As I said, there's "somewhere" for everyone . . .

Click to expand...

Which is great because the more people there are who love sun and stuff, the less people there are up here in the really exciting country.

I like the fact it's a little bit scarey. The water's 1,000' deep, the mountains come straight up out of it, the currents can run up to 20 knots in places, there's whirlpools and rapids and stuff, and once you get north a bit you're pretty much up to your own devices. Everything's desiged to make you realize how insignificant man is in the face of nature. Most of the life up here-- in the water and out of it--- doesn't care if you live or die. Until one has been chased around a bit by a brown bear who's pissed that you've trespassed into his yard, one doesn't fully grasp the meaning of "being alive."

I've seen a lotta, lotta places in the course of my work and vacations so far. And while I've seen some fascinating stuff all over the planet, and there are a lot more things I'd like to see, there is no place I would rather live day after day than the area between Puget Sound and the top of SE Alaska.

Seattle sucks as cities go, but it's not very big and one can get away from it into a completely different environment in 30 minutes. Now if we can just convince half the populaton that what they really want to do is move to where it's sunny all the time, then we'd really have something here.......

I hear ya.
The west has mountains, the east has "hills", and down here the best we can do are good size sand dunes!
I'm just happy that I have been able to experience so much of it. Would have loved to cruise from Seattle to Alaska, but never got the opportunity, so am happy to read the adventures of others.
And as far as wildlife, I've had way to close encounters with a bobcat, cougar, and black bears, so I am happy to see the sharks just from the boat or beach.

Marin said:

Until one has been chased around a bit by a brown bear who's pissed that you've trespassed into his yard, one doesn't fully grasp the meaning of "being alive."

Click to expand...

Wifey B: I can think of far better ways to grasp "being alive". Far more fun. And I've enjoyed watching the brown bears but sure the heck don't need to be chased by them.

BandB said:

Wifey B: I can think of far better ways to grasp "being alive". Far more fun. And I've enjoyed watching the brown bears but sure the heck don't need to be chased by them.

Click to expand...

Sometimes you have no choice.

Well, the weather man was wrong. Who'd have thunk it.

Main heavy snow bands are east of NYC. It'll still be a big snow, but nothing special.

Glad I didn't rush home.

Got just the right amount of snow from the storm here in Salisbury, MD (Eastern shore of MD). Heading back to Fort Myers, FL tomorrow for some sun and 70s. Unlike Marin, I grew up in New England with winter depression and recognized it for the plague that it is.



Ted