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Published: February 17th 2006
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So one of the benefits of technology is that we now have the means of finding out future weather so we can, for instance, plan weekend trips. The only problem is that there is no guarantee that the weather man will be right, and then we can end up having all the wrong clothes or....I don't know...getting stuck on a freezing cold train next to a boy who talks like Eminem for three hours. I had that experience this past weekend...but it wasn't because the weather man was wrong...it was because I'm so used to the weather man being wrong that I decided there would be no snow despite the 100% chance of it. So I went home on Friday afternoon. I had a lovely trip. The train wasn't very full, so I got my own two seats to myself, and there were no delays so I got home right on time. My boyfriend came home, too, and we anticipated a nice weekend together to see Curious George and celebrate Valentine's Day. But of course we were wrong.
I woke up Saturday morning to the sound of my dad's voice (he's super loud sometimes). He was talking about going in
All I wanted...
I just wanted a nice weekend to celebrate Valentine's Day with Doug...was that so much to ask for? to visit his patients and how he was going to need to take my car. And then the panic struck. Take MY car? That can only mean one thing. Snow. There is only one condition in which my dad can't use his car, and that is snow. So I thought to myself "Ok, I guess I just can't go anywhere until Dad gets back...fine." But it was not fine. It kept snowing and snowing and snowing and snowing until my car became relatively worthless as well (a Pontiac simply cannot make it through 15 inches of un-plowed snow), and then we were reduced to one car--my mom's Suburban-- for four drivers . Ok, so even THAT wasn't all that bad considering the fact that when there's 15 inches of snow on the ground there is really nowhere to go anyway, but that did still leave me with one problem. How was I going to get back to school? I always take Amtrak because it is so convenient, but I didn't know if they would even be running in that much snow.
Well, they were....sortof. I got to the train station and waited FOREVER until my train finally rolled in
We couldn't leave!
When they eventually plowed, they seemed to have forgotten my street...as you can see the sidewalk was shoveled out on both sides, but we did not have a road (the thing that looks like a road on the other side of the tree is actually my neighbor's driveway) from DC about an hour and a half late. I was so excited to find an empty seat as soon as I stepped onto the train, and then this guy who talked like Eminem sat down next to me. He was interesting. But anyway, we got going and I thought I would get back in time for my regular Sunday night dinner with Brandon and his roomate, but then it happened. We stopped. We were 10 minutes from Wilmington and we stopped. They came on the intercom to tell us that the signal was frozen (still not exactly sure what that means) and they couldn't move without a signal. Of course by this time it was about 5:00 and it was only getting colder, so nobody really knew how long we would be there. And oh yea, because I was sitting near the door i was freeeeeeezing.
By the time we got going, a little over an hour had gone by, the cafe car had run out of food, all trains for the rest of the night had been cancelled, and they told us to expect a mob scene of people trying to get on the train when we got to Philadelphia. Apparently this comment upset someone...they came on the intercome and apologized about a half hour later. Well anyway, when we finally did get going, we had to go slow and it took forever. I got in to Philadelphia around 7:15 and was back at school around 8, and was, needless to say, a little grumpy.
Well, that is plenty of my story to illustrate my point: we can do so much with technology. We are very smart. And yet we still cannot travel in the snow. Now, I realize that in the mid-Atlantic and the southern-most part of the northeast we do not really get enough snow to be able to handle it quickly, but Amtrak runs all over the country, so I find it surprising that they do not have the means of dealing with snow. I guess from now on I should have a little more faith in the weather man.
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