I'm cold. My blood must have thinned out in London. But then again, it has been stormy here in Boston for the first time
this winter, from what I can tell. That's very unusual. But it was very cold for seven to ten days before the storm, so the
ground was frozen. Anyway, it was a classic New England
nor'easter. In this order, we had something like four inches of snow, three inches of hail, a half inch of rain or so, followed by freezing
cold and another inch of snow. The storm lasted about 24 hours. One of the characteristics of a nor-easter is that when the
storm pushes out to sea, frigid Canadian winds usually sweep across New England freezing up all the aforementioned precipitate.
Oh, but a picture is worth a thousand words, right? Here's my street this morning.
Now one thing to bear in mind here. Everything here that even remotely looks like water in any form is frozen solid.
That tire track right in the bottom center? Solid ice. The snowbank on the sidewalk? Solid ice.
OK, so I can deal with that. I was lucky. I was able to shovel before it changed. It's obviously much easier to shovel
dry snow than wet snow. On the downside, there's a solid sheet of ice coating the driveway. Time to pick up some sand, I think.
Anyway, one of my neighbors is fortunate enough to have a snow-thrower (I doubt I can get one - they typically sell out
for the season by the first storm), but waited until the end of the storm to use it. As a former snow-thrower owner, I know
exactly what he went through. Snow-throwers are very deliberately named: they throw snow really well. What they don't work
on as well is a mix of snow, rain and hail.
You can still use 'em, though. But they clog up frequently and the stuff that gets spewed out is more like newly made
concrete mix. It's any icy wet paste that sticks to anything and freezes up into ice. What makes it worse is that the air
temperature is well below freezing, so when this stuff hits an object, say, a wooden fence, it will just stick to it.
This is the house that was, well, in the way of the snow-thrower, I guess. I only did this by accident when
I owned one, because every rational part of me thought it was a bad idea to fling icy slush at my house knowing it would stick
on contact and not knowing how long it would take to come off. But my neighbor has maybe already tried this or simply doesn't
care.
All that stuff against the house? Solid ice. I hope he doesn't need a meter reading or other utility visit
soon, because they absolutely hate this kind of thing. Can you imagine what it must be like for a meter reader or an oil delivery
company on a day like today?
I went out to lunch yesterday with a colleague that I worked with years ago - in the speech recognition business. (By
the way, thanks to JM for introducing me to
Something Savory -- good Cuban food in Arlington Heights!) But that's not what I'm writing about. His office turned out to be extremely
close to my house. Since we only have one car, I decided to walk home.
Now, JM thought I was crazy, because it was around 20° (-5° C) with a stiff breeze, but I brought my gloves and scarf
and stuff and was ready for it. I should tell you that even though I live quite close to Boston (under 5 miles or so) it is
a small town by comparison to London. The Mystic River flows through Winchester, Medford and Arlington on its way to Boston
Harbor. Although it has all the problems of an urban river, it is still pretty. Moreover, I was pretty sure that I would be
the only one there.
This turned out to be true. That's a big difference between Boston and London. I walked about one mile home, and when
I was walking the river I didn't encounter a single person. The point of all this was to take pictures. My mother always said
to take advantage of any opportunity. So how often do I get the chance to walk a frozen river bank for 45 minutes taking pictures?
Not very often.
And it was productive, as you can see. I'm not sure I got any true keepers, but I came very close. The nice thing about
this river is that there are almost always swans and geese about. Sometimes too many geese, as you've seen in these pages
before.
This might be the best of the lot, although these are still 'draft' prints. I probably won't take these much further
but there are a few other promising ones I haven't dealt with yet.
These are both B&W for a few reasons, but in reality, I should tell you that there is very little color in either
picture anyway. It's similar (although not quite as dramatic) as the photos from
El Golpho last year.
