Tony Rizzo | Getting through Snowmageddon I, and II

I certainly hope that by the time you read this, most of that miserable snow will have melted away.

But this was written last week on the day of Snowmageddon (how exactly do you spell that word?) II.

And as I glance out the window I see six-foot piles of snow, half-buried cars and what the? Some yahoo pedaling a bicycle?

Different spokes for different folks, eh?

Anyway, while I certainly haven’t enjoyed the experience of facing two major snowstorms in less than a week, it has at least taught me something about myself.

I’m stupid.

How else can you explain my pig-headed insistence on both occasions to drive through whiteout conditions just to get to work?

While many (most) of my coworkers were, if not snug in their beds, safely ensconced in their homes and using such modern devices as telephones and computers to do the same thing I was doing at the office, I was grimly engaged in a white-knuckle adventure with a whole bunch of other morons.

But getting to work was only half the fun.

On Snowmageddon (I’m going with snow replacing Ar on the front end of Armageddon) I, my intrepid trek was rewarded with a prime parking spot on the street just feet from the building’s door.

Then the snow plows rolled by and my car became one of those half-buried and forlorn hunks of stranded metal. The prospect of digging out from that predicament kind of cast a pall over the rest of a mind-numbingly busy day.

At least in a somewhat unusual break from character for me, I thought ahead and threw a shovel in my car the night before.

I’d probably still be shoveling without a hand from two of my coworkers and the massive help of another employee and his Bobcat which made quick work of about 87,000 cubic feet if heavy, wet snow.

I made it home that night, only to grind to a halt at the foot of my driveway. But our neighbors and a miscellaneous kid or two helped shovel me out of trouble.

Storm number two, really more of a Snowpocalypse than a Snowmageddon in my opinion, came in just as hard as the first one, but because so many people got wise (present company excluded), there was a lot less traffic and a lot less trouble on the road.

Of course, now I have to get in the car and make the drive, so hopefully I didn’t just jinx myself.

I’m also hoping against hope that my 14-year-old daughter will have wanted some favor from dear old dad so much, that she will have shoveled the driveway.

But the Facebook picture posted 30 minutes ago that shows her and a friend at Suicide Hill makes me think I’ve got some shoveling to do when I get home.

Oh well, at least there’s cold beer in the fridge and warm hearts in the loved ones who will greet me on my arrival.

Actually I’m out of beer and it’s more likely that I will be greeted by feuding cabin-fever suffering kids, but I was on a roll so I went with the fantasy.

The only thing worse than shoveling all this snow is hearing someone from places like Popsicle Falls, N.Y., brag about how where they come from people know how to drive, blah, blah, blah.

They are more than welcome to go back home and take all this snow with them.

Me and you? I think we’ve had enough.