Wussies

A couple weeks ago when a Philadelphia Eagles game was postponed due to a snowstorm, Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell said we've become a "nation of wussies" for not holding the game in the snow.  I have to say I agree - maybe not on a national level, but locally when it comes to snow I'm surrounded by wussies.

Okay, maybe it's not so much that they're wussies but natives to the region don't understand how to handle snow - which I don't really understand since it snows every winter.   They brake when it gets slippery (a good way to slide even more) but relax when the road is "just wet" - a.k.a. covered with black ice. 

The way people act around here when there is impending snow is a little crazy.  They leave work early as soon as flakes start falling, the buy bread, milk and eggs (because the weathermen tell them to!), and they start driving into each other on the roads as if they'd never seen this strange white stuff falling from the sky before.

But this is Pennsylvania.  We don't live in Florida or Alabama or somewhere else where they rarely see snow and the local snow plow only gets mounted on a truck once in a blue moon.  It snows here every January.  Yet you would think that snow is a brand new experience for people around here every winter.

We've had plenty of warning that a snowstorm was headed our way again yesterday.  You might think they would be ready to salt and plow a few roads in the afternoon when the snow started around 4:00 PM.  Nope, Beth and I went out to Bob Evans for dinner tonight and drove home over some well-packed snow that had not been touched by a municipal plow or salt truck.

Last Saturday I did a "long run."  When I left in the morning it looked like this:

And it got worse before it got better.  Not as snowy as yesterday, but snowy.  I ran 15.7 miles in that weather - probably further than most people around here would be willing to drive (and the roads weren't even that bad).   Of course, if we saw a salt truck or plow out on the road when the flakes start falling (instead of after it had piled up on the roadways) maybe people would be a little less fearful of this strange white powder falling from the sky.