Navigating Nemo

The last time I spoke about the impending blizzard on the blog was Thursday, when I argued that it was probably going to turn out to be much ado about nothing and that the media was hyping this storm up because it had nothing better to do. Turns out, I was loud-wrong on that one because Nemo smacked this part of the country pretty good. (Unrelated, since when are we naming winter storms? I know nor'easters are somewhat similar to hurricanes and hurricanes get names, but I don't remember this happening in the past. It has to be kind of a new thing because in every comparison to previous blizzards the earlier storms were just identified by date. I'm just saying you would think I would have heard of it before now, especially since we appear to already be up to the Ns.) But the worst part is that wasn't even what I was the most wrong about. I thought since the storm was starting Friday afternoon and was supposed to be done by Saturday afternoon the cleanup would begin then and be done by Sunday afternoon, allowing us to resume our regularly scheduled lives on Monday with minimal disruption. As I watched TV Sunday afternoon and saw school after school being added to the list of closings for Monday I couldn't figure out why. Then I went for a drive.

The problem is my street was actually cleared out pretty well, which gave me a false sense of hope. I assumed that if my driveway was cleared after 2-plus hours of labor and the state had people working around the clock therefore they must be far ahead of me in terms of cleaning the roads. I continued to hold on to this belief when I came to one intersection which was closed so the crews could pile two or three streets worth of snow in one spot to be put into the 18-wheeler and hauled away. The severity of the clean up really only hit me when that closed intersection forced me to be rerouted onto a side street which I don't think had seen a plow since Friday afternoon. After that I drove down some major roadways and saw that where there are normally three lanes had been reduced to two and more often one-and-a-half lanes. It was then I realized that some of these kids may not see the inside of a classroom until next week. The problem is I forgot one key element of snow clean-up: actually removing the snow. Sure, we can pile up the mounds on the side of our driveways in about two hours but when the state is involved they can't leave these massive piles at the corners and wait for it to melt, they need it to be totally gone. Plus they have a lot more roads to clear and it is a lot of snow to find a new home for. Often that means putting it on the sidewalks, which creates a totally different set of problems.

Look, I totally understand the need to get out of the house after a storm like this. You can only sit inside for so long before you start to go crazy. I can even appreciate the restaurants which tried to open with a limited menu just to give people a place to go. However, at some point the need to see someplace other than the same 6 rooms of your house needs to be trumped by common sense. Not surprisingly, I am talking to the people of Brookline. If we're ranking Massachusetts pedestrians by competency, Brookline people are near the bottom of the list due to their combination of totally obliviousness and high self-importance which makes them think cars not only will stop whenever the pedestrians randomly get the urge to cross the road, but that the drivers of those cars will be grateful for the chance to do so. Also, too many college students who think the middle of the road is a great place to have a debate about whether they should stay at this bar or go to a new one. Taking away their sidewalks just makes them even more insufferable. They are ten times worse than the bikers who refuse to stay in the bike lane. The thing is the sidewalks in Brookline had been kind of cleared. Not great, but wide enough for two people and a sloppy sidewalk is still a safer place to be than a sloppy street. Yet at one point I came around the corner and saw four people just walking in the middle of Beacon Street as if they owned it. I was rooting for a sander to come along and pelt them with rock salt but it never came.

Obviously, this storm clean-up is going to take longer than I initially thought it would. Even with the warmer temperatures predicted this week it is not like this snow will disappear as quickly as it arrived. Since it is now frowned upon to throw the snow into the ocean like they did in the '70s, it is entirely possible some of these larger snow mounds will last until June. (I'm not complaining about that fact because it is not like I have any better ideas of what to do with it. I actually have no complaints at all concerning how all this was handled by anyone working for the state. I thought the Friday 4 pm driving ban was a really good plan which saved a lot of people a lot of aggravation.) All I want is a little common sense from people as we try and get through the next couple of days. Once the roads are back to their normal width and most of the parking spots have been dug out we can feel free to start driving like idiots again, but until that happens we need to figure out a way to work together a little better. That means doing very-unMasshole things like letting people merge and waiting our turn at intersections. I'm sure we can do it if we try.... plus, it helps if you just keep telling yourself spring starts in 38 days.