For the Glory of Old State

We had a marvelous snowstorm on Tuesday morning. The kind that makes you want to stand up and shout; unless, of course, you had to drive in it. But I didn't. I took the bus. So I enjoyed it fully.

The snow we received that morning was followed by a wintry mix and eventually freezing rain that coated everything with ice. The temperature was predicted to rise above freezing overnight, but alas, it didn't.

I awoke Wednesday morning just before 6, and went outside to check on things. The front steps were a nightmare, the driveway a shiny sheet of treachery and certain death. At about 27 degrees F, everything was frozen solid with ice!

Penn State is famous for not cancelling classes when the weather is awful. I guess they presume we're made out of tough enough stuff to grit it out and go anyway, regardless of the weather. I checked online for delays: of course, the answer was no. So I hopped in the shower with great haste, and got ready to catch the bus.

My walk to the bus stop was fraught with peril. I could not even stand up on the worst of it, which was pretty much all of it. Instead, I crunched my way through the icy-crusty snow along the edges, where I could get traction.

The side road across the street, where I stand at 7 am to wait for the bus, had not been touched. You could not walk on it, but people were DRIVING on it. Go figure. The plow arrived and put down ice melt treatments just as I was standing there; it didn't help much.

The bus arrived; the driver's face was ashen and her knuckles were white from clenching the steering wheel. Yes, she said, the roads were quite bad in some places. The bus had to come to a complete stop on icy hills several times on our drive into town; conditions were that bad.

On campus, every sidewalk, driveway, parking lot, and untreated surface was a sheet of ice. Almost all of the surfaces that I saw had been treated, but there was so much ice that it did barely any good.

I did not actually see anyone fall, but I imagine that happened to quite a few people before the surfaces had been treated. And maybe even after, too. I walked - very, very carefully - over to the Nittany Lion Shrine to see what our mascot was up to, and give him a little smooch on the nose.

I'm out and about in your icy mornings, kissing your lions.

The lion statue was covered in ice, and an icy tear ran down its eye. I thought that was pretty neat to see, and so I've included The Tears of the Lion as an extra photo.

I carefully crab-walked my way down to the middle of campus to take some shots around Old Main, our chief administrative building. The sun had just started hitting the tops of the trees at the Lion Shrine, and by the time I got to Old Main, the building was bathed in full golden glory.

That's the shot you see above: Old Main against a sapphire blue sky, with one of my favorite trees (an elm) to the left of the building. The sidewalks were shining with the gold of the morning sun. In fact, say what you will about the world ending in ice, it certainly makes for nice reflections.

As I stood out in the world among the treacherous conditions with my camera, I thought back to something my husband had said a few years ago. It was another icy morning and the storm had taken our power out.

I was getting ready to catch the bus in full darkness, but I was crowing about how absolutely gorgeous the pictures would be once the sun hit all that sparkle, when my husband said to me (in a tone of voice that implied that I was One Crazy Woman, and he should know):

"You don't care what happens, as long as it's beautiful!"

Words of wisdom. :-) Anyway, back to the current event. I did not fall once, though I slipped and slid a bunch of times. Onward State, a local student-related news organization, shared a video of students slipping and sliding (and falling) Tuesday night. I'm including a link to that video here, along with a personal note that conditions weren't much better on Wednesday morning!

The title of this Blip posting is a line from our alma mater (as well as the reason why I got up and went out on this icy day). But the song for this posting is how I felt just before 6 am, when I went out and saw all of that ice. And then I came back inside and saw there was NO closing or delay, so I knew that I had to go out in it. Asia: GO!