March Madness
I am an on/off fan of basketball and have reverence for the game. It's a great sport for school kids too, a real teamwork kind of interaction.
BUT
There is a dark side to it, for example... March, springtime in the Rockies, to be specific.
There is a collegiate basketball tournament this weekend in a big Montana city so players are coming from many places in and outside the state. Currently we are 18 hours into a serious blizzard, already have 3+ feet since late yesterday afternoon with blowing and drifting, visibility - half a block and only because there's a streetlight there.
I get up at stupid early hours, way ahead of my neighbors. I was sitting here browsing DU when I started to hear shouting outside. Concerned someone might be in need of help I started peeking out from behind my heavy drapes.
What I found was my neighbor and her son trying to clear her Honda van (no clearance whatsoever) so she could get out the driveway... at 5am. This not being an hour they are likely to be up, I opened my door to see if there was some emergency, my vehicles would be able to clear the three ft of snow if there was. But no, they were trying to get to the basketball tournament in big city over a hundred miles away. They have a few of the players to transport so they have to get there.
Noticing I was becoming coated with snow from head to toe just peeking out the door, I asked if they needed more light and turned on my laser blaster porch light for them.
So I dried off, scooped up the bucket of snow that fell inside from the knee high drift up against the door and pulled up the road report on the computer. I mean, this blizzard is not going to let up even a tiny bit until late Monday at least. All the mountain passes in the western end of the state are closed, they probably have about five ft of new snow, at least. I'm surprised they haven't closed more of the interstate.
So I get my long down coat on and pull on boots and step outside to implore them to give it up and go make some phone calls, consider their safety. I told them the roads would probably be closed by the time they got to the Interstate, after all their work. That young man shoveled a good 40ft of 3ft deep snow in the end. I encouraged them to use cat litter, which they did, another neighbor came out and gave them more.
Fortunately I was assured that they had decided I was making sense but had to go down the hill, about a mile, to get the brother. Our street doesn't usually get plowed, you have to make it to the main road that goes up to the rich people's house to find plowed road. I wonder if they will get down the hill with all the drifting and I have my doubts about how they'll make it back up.
So why didn't the tournament get postponed until this monster snowstorm passed? Just getting there is risking the lives of the players and all of their individual entourage groups.
Meanwhile, I will stay inside and rearrange my furniture like I planned. On the radio we are being told as much as 3 INCHES is expected... we have 36 of them already!
*sigh*
https://www.aviationweather.gov/satellite/plot?region=cod
The rotation is counter clockwise so the stuff on the right is rotating to the left.