Skittles Blizzard

Tonight I went out to Torquay (torr-KEY) for the local Rotary club's Skittles night. Skittles is a game similar to bowling, except that it is played with nine pins arranged in a diamond pattern (i.e., a square with a corner pointing down the lane) and has no gutters. Thus, while it is impossible to get a gutterball, it is possible to throw the ball out of the lane entirely, or to pass between rows of pins without hitting anything. My team won (by virtue of the other team conceding their one-point lead after it was pointed out to them that they had had nine extra balls because they had 15 players to our 14). At the end of the game, Yulia and I piled back into Brian's car to head back to Exeter.

We made it to Telegraph Hill, which is part of the way back to Exeter from Torquay, where traffic was stalled by the snow. We were stuck on Telegraph Hill from about 9:30 pm until 11:15 pm or so, at which time the police started turning people around to go back down the hill on the wrong side of the road (there was a median with a guardrail between us and the other direction's lanes). At the bottom of the hill, we were forced to exit into Newton Abbot, a town between Exeter and Torquay. At that point, we were just happy to be off the hill, as we had been afraid that we were going to have to spend the night there. From Newton Abbot, we navigated down to Teignmouth, a small town on the coast at the mouth of the River Teign (hence the name), and from there on to Dawlish, following back roads to avoid a pair of broken-down lorries (18-wheelers).

The snow and ice and sleet (varied with the location) made the going very slow, and we finally made it back into Exeter after 12:40 am. We then proceeded to campus to deposit Yulia at her flat, but we were unable to work our way up the hill on Prince of Wales Road. I was amazed that we were able to make it up Streatham Drive, which is a steeper hill, but it had been cleared by other vehicles to a large degree. Ultimately, Yulia had to walk about ten to fifteen minutes back in the snow, but at least it hadn't had the chance to freeze to ice underneath yet.

After dropping Yulia off, Brian ferried me back down through New North Road over to Sidwell Street, and dropped me off outside Sydenham House on Blackboy Road. There must have been about four inches of snowfall here so far tonight (the forecast was for NONE by this time of morning). I finally made it inside around 1:25 am.

On the funny side, we passed a bus stop that was covered in snow at about 1:00 am on Topsham Road. Stagecoach Devon had suspended operations about 10:00 pm; however, some enterprising artist(s) had gone out and built two snowmen at the bus stop, one with his tree-limb arm sticking out to hail the (suspended) bus.