It doesn't matter how old I get, or how much I hate the cold weather - It doesn't matter how much I'll ache the next day from working body parts I haven't used since the summer - There is just something so awesome about fresh, white snow that makes the kid in me peek out the window and turn on the TV hoping for a snow day so I can stay home and play in it!
Unfortunately, living in a relatively busy and populated city, our transit system puts salt down the night before snow is expected and streets are shoveled way before anyone gets up - We have to get about six inches overnight and have the snow fall steady through to the morning to hope for a day off - Clearly much more than the few inches it took to get off from school...damn being a working adult
Still, I couldn't help but just want to get off my train this morning and make a snow-angel at the North Philadelphia Train Station when I saw they had cleared most, but not all the snow that had fallen yesterday - It was only about an inch or so, but there was so much untouched snow...it was beautiful, and it wanted me to play in it as much as I did
Snow forts are my favorite - Since I was strong enough to pull a sled full of snow I made snow forts with my brother or my friends or just by myself - I always loved to dig or shovel snow (or sand, my favorite part of the beach) and even if I couldn't finish the fort, at least I had cleared a few of my neighbors properties for them - Of course that meant my parents were left to break down all the snow I carried from our neighbors property to ours in an attempt to build something I would forget about once my mom called me in to warm up and have some lunch - Luckily my sister loved to make snowmen and that's how most of my forts ended up
Snowmen are pointless, there isn't enough digging involved, and once your done you cant really play with them - you can dress them up and watch your mom scream when she finds out you used the "good" scarf your grandmother just bought you for Christmas, but you cant tunnel through them - A magic hat never blows onto your property to make your snowman come to life, but strangely enough you watch him slowly die every day it gets a little warmer - Yeah, snowmen are pointless...unless you are sledding into them for destruction
Sledding is AWESOME - especially with those plastic round sleds you always try to spin before you go down the hill and wind up riding all the way down the hill backwards, never expecting the tail bone shattering bump that flips you upside down and face first into the dirty snow - as the day went on the snow got thinner and dirtier but all the more fast and dangerous - I really hope this is how snowboarding turns out
I will be going to Colorado for a snowboarding trip the first weekend in February - Look out for my feelings on it in "Snow Day 2"
Warm, dry, and bitterly yours,
Sarah M.
