A Blizzard in New York

So we missed Christmas, but that doesn’t mean that the entire week is a bust. We tend to go to NYC between Christmas and New Years. The weather coming in, though, meant that we needed to be flexible in our plans, lest we lose most or all of our vacation to weather delays.

An inch of snow sends Charlotte into a fit of apoplexy. 6 inches would make them catatonic, not to mention closing the airports in NYC should the blizzard beat us. As a result, we made some quick calculations and took a risk, catching a shuttle to the airport and changing to an earlier flight.

This time, we’re staying in a friend’s apartment while he’s gone to sunny Florida, so we didn’t have to worry much about availability. His apartment was already vacant; we had the keys so it was just a matter of getting his OK for the early arrival, which wasn’t a problem.

If you’ve followed this blog, you’ll know that we’ve done this before. We now have enough friends and “friends of friends” in NYC that we can often scrounge an apartment for less than the price of a hotel room, which is undoubtedly the major expense in the trip.

Shifting flights wasn’t a major problem, since US Airways had waived change fees in light of the upcoming blizzards and was encouraging people to travel early. We even got first class upgrades!

Supersonic jets move faster than weather systems, so we went out in the snow but then were ahead of it and landed with nary a raindrop on the airplane at LaGuardia. Our ride had been changed once we were assured of a seat on the airplane (which was held about 20 minutes to accommodate some 40 people coming in from France – talk about looking ROUGH – when we tracked it back, our estimation was that they left Paris about 5:00 in the morning.)

The apartment, which we’d seen before, is decent. A queen size bed, couch, wireless internet access, decent kitchen and bathroom and a 52 INCH TELEVISION. It’s like sleeping in a drive-in movie to some extent, but it’s great. The owner of the apartment tells us that the television was a holdover from a former, much larger apartment.

We throw off our bags, grab some food at the diner across the street and go off exploring as the weather station blares the alert about 65 mph winds, blowing snow and the need to stay indoors.

HA! There weren’t a dozen snowflakes blowing around in the breeze. This was NOT going to interfere with our vacation.

After piddling around much of the day, we went out again about 5:00 in the afternoon to do a bit of exploring and gather more food. We were not about to miss a meal because of the weather, that’s for sure

As is our norm, we had a destination picked out for dinner, a place called “5 Napkin Burger” for what would become obvious reasons. On the way there, we had a unique experience.

I’d seen “thundersnow” before; actually, I’d heard it but hadn’t ever really seen the lightning that I knew had to be there. While walking down the street, thought, we got caught in a thundersnowstorm. It was amazingly beautiful – huge flashes of lightning, that sparkled off of the snowflakes and accumulated snow, making them look like diamonds floating in the air, followed by booming claps of thunder that made you duck your head and flinch.

After we arrived at the restaurant, we had a couple of martinis (for purely therapeutic purposes, of course – to calm our nerves after the thundersnow) while we waited on our burgers led us to begin to appraise the weather situation again. Now the television was saying that we were looking at sustained winds of 40 mph and gusts and it was looking like that was exactly what was happening outside.

Thoughts of other ventures were abandoned in favor of going home and hunkering down for a while.

The thing about a blizzard, as long as the power stays on, is that it’s really not that scary in a big city. We could see people moving on the streets, including some very ill advised ones who were insisting on taking their cars on the roads still.

By 11:30 we’d heard all the weather we needed, recognized that over 1,000 flights had been cancelled and that the airports would soon be closed. Even the subway and buses were closing down, since they couldn’t navigate the weather.

We called it a night and went to bed.

This morning, the extent of the storm was pretty obvious. Twenty (20) inches of snow is a lot by any estimation, and that’s what they finally said happened a few blocks away in Central Park. The city was essentially shut down.

Except that New York is the city that never sleeps, so “shut down” by their standards means “still pretty darned busy” by everyone else’s standards. There were still food delivery guys on bikes trying to make deliveries. Diners were still open. But vehicles were stopped.

Here’s a hint. “Lexus” does not mean “All Terrain Vehicle” in any language. I think it means “Abandoned on the side of the road in a blizzard” though, in some obscure dialect.

The snow was gone, but the wind was still blowing fiercely when we ventured out about noon on Monday. They were still calling it a “blizzard”, even though nothing new was falling from the sky and the sun was out part of the time.

We learned that what doesn’t look like so much snow from the 4th floor, where our apartment is, is really a LOT of snow when you’re on the ground trying to walk through it. So much so that sometimes you have to turn around and walk around the block because it’s easier than trying to climb a mountain of snow and ice left by the plows.

So we walked down the street to another restaurant, this time called “Print.” It’s in the lobby of a hotel, is kind of funky and was actually pretty nice – on 11th at 48th, for those trying to find it. There, we first applied antifreeze to get our blood moving and then followed that with an amazing butternut squash soup and a $17.00 hamburger.

Get used to it, that’s New York City. It was a very good burger, though.

Things we noticed were the number of cars that were simply abandoned in the street, their drivers unable to coax them any further. Even the yellow cabs you normally see everywhere had been abandoned during the evening, although most of them were at least curbside. City busses didn’t fare so well, often stopped across more than one lane of traffic and just sitting there.

I have no idea what you’d do if you were on your way home and the bus dropped you off in the middle of a blizzard blocks from anything familiar. The one bad thing about where we are is that its several blocks to a subway station, so there was a long cold walk potentially there for anyone in that position.

If you’ve never had to walk in a dress suit in a snowstorm, I can tell you from my own experience that it offers little in the way of protection.

The television said that every inch of snow costs the City $1 million in cleanup expenses. That doesn’t take into account lost revenue because people aren’t buying things, paying sales tax, etc.

$20 million is a lot for something you want to try to get rid of as quickly as possible.

So by 2:30 or so, we’d made it back to our apartment, partially frozen (our antifreeze had worn off by then) and ready to commit the adventure to print and upload the pics.

Well, we would, except that the cable for the camera is still on my desk in Hickory. The problem with not having enough time to pack and follow your normal routine is that things get left behind.

Thanks to the wonders of his blackberry, we have a few picks to share, though.

Now it’s time for a nap until we meet our friends for dinner a bit later.

We are staying at the end of this street -- 43rd and 11th Ave.....affectionately known as "Hells Kitchen."  More on that later.