Playing in the Snow

Today, Amanda dragged me outside to make snow angels. It was painful.

First thing out of the gate, I slipped and fell while trying to get into position to make a snow angel. Not wanting to have to get back down in the snow, I worked from where I was-which left me no room to move my legs. In the end, my snow angel had giant wings, but essentially no legs. I think it looks like it is still on "training wings."

Next, Amanda built a Snowmanda. It was about 14 inches tall, and reasonably cute. I could tell it was hers by the double chin. 

I followed up by building a snow duck, and carving it a nice little beak. It looked much better in person, trust me.

As we went back inside, Amanda complained that she couldn't get me to have a snowball fight with her, so I picked up a chunk of snow (that, in retrospect, was way too dirty for the purpose) and chunked it at her. She didn't think it was very funny, but we did manage to get the dirt off of her coat, which is more than we can say for the seat of my pants, which are covered in mud.

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.

Snow Angels

At Mom's request, I ventured out into the snow today and make a snow angel on the lawn of Sydenham House. I just didn't feel up to it until this afternoon. It was fun, though cold, and Will got a good laugh while taking pictures of me

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Bristol and Snow Storm

Our stay in Bristol was mostly pleasant. Christof, the German Rotary Scholar we stayed with, made us breakfast consisting of fried eggs, bread, and yogurt. It was a very yummy and pleasant surprise. During breakfast, he explained to us how to get back to the train station, which he said was about a 30 minute walk from his flat. 

We set out around 8:00 AM, giving ourselves a little over an hour to make the trek. Though it was quite a long way (Christof's estimate proved to be quite ambitious), it was a lovely walk which allowed us to see Bristol's harbour and the S.S. GReat Britain. Since we had never been to Bristol before, we stopped briefly to admire them and take pictures.  

We probably would not have stopped if we had realized how far we still were from the train station. We ended up getting there around 9:03, about 10 minutes before our train was scheduled to leave. As it turns out though, we were nowhere close to missing our train. The snow storm that had begun while we were in London worsened overnight, causing massive public transit delays. We sat in the train station shivering and being pelted with snow flurries as the video screens keep changing to show the increasing delay of our train. Finally, at around 10:00, our train appeared, and we were able to make our way to Exeter. 

The delay, however, was quite problematic, because Will was supposed to meet a Rotarian from Tiverton at 11:15 at a location several miles from the train station in order to ride with him to give a presentation at the club's lunchtime meeting. Fortunately, Will was able to get in touch with the Rotarian and ask him to instead meet him at the train station. Our train continued to get further delayed on its way to Exeter due to have to stop at a lot of red lights. We finally arrived around 11:30.

Since Will had to go straight to the Rotary meeting, I got the job of carrying all of our luggage- about 120 pounds of it! - home. I carried about 30 pounds of it on my back and dragged the other 90 in two wheeled bags. It took me around an hour to make the one-a-half-mile trek from the train station to our flat, since I had to stop occasionally and rest my arms. By the time I got home, I was totally exhausted. 

As a result, I didn't notice that it had started to snow until Will came home and informed me. Though Exeter very rarely gets any snow at all, we got a good deal of it today, as more is falling even as I write.