The dish is clear

I just realized that I’d blogged every day of December. That’s a first!

I don’t think the content of all 31 days was particularly stellar but then again; have ya read the New York Times lately?

I suppose I could try and shame them, as is our custom now. But somehow I think it would be a waste of time to try to shame the shameless.

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Moving on…

Snow clearing was work, but not painful. The sun and warmer temps helped a lot. The snow is mostly powder.

We’ve already had snow players driving to the end of our street to play in the “no play” flood control zone.

The most disconcerting of the players, was the group of Asians driving by taking pictures of us and our homes waving and smiling like they were on a ride a Disneyland.

I thought about charging them admission, I could use the money!

At least they’re respectful even if they seem unclear that this is a neighborhood, and we haven’t cleared driveways and the street so that they could come up and play. On the plus side, they don’t leave trash and they’re generally very pleasant.

There are other groups who are, shall we say, ASSHOLES!

The neighborhood is bracing for the inevitable onslaught this weekend. Some of the neighbors are putting up chains across their driveways and others have parked their 2nd vehicle sideways in their driveway to prevent snow players from parking.

As a note, it’s not the parking so much that we mind. It’s folks getting stuck in our driveways then spinning their tires until they’ve torn up the pavement or in some cases had their cars slide uncontrolled into our cars.

The best one I’ve heard; ( I don’t know if this is rumor or cautionary tale, I can’t confirm it or when it was supposed to have happened, ) was the car that slid down a guys driveway and took out his garage door and 4 Harleys sitting in the garage.

The folks in the car abandoned it, and ran down the road. It’s 20° F, they’ve got small kids, and must be at least 20 miles from home. (Assumed because if they lived here the wouldn’t be parking in someone else’s driveway to play in the snow.) So running down the road abandoning the car, they’re planning to… what? Cops rounded ‘em up and made them own-up to their crime.

Even if the story is a cautionary tale, the sad part is that I could see it happening. After all I’ve had multiple confrontations in my own driveway.

There is NOTHING more irritating than having your car warming up in the driveway, clearing the last bits of snow and ice from the end of your driveway, then getting into your car to go to work and having someone come screaming in behind you thinking they can park and you’ll drive your car around them.

Uhh NO, that’s not how this works!

We’ve heard as of this afternoon that the police are already ticketing and moving folks along to the designated play areas. So it looks like they’ve taken the complaints we made last year seriously.

The sad thing is that generally if people are polite and don’t trash the place we really don’t mind folks playing around our homes or in the open spaces or lots around town. Usually, you’d think of those places as “locals only” you know, kids from the neighborhood, but there’s always room for a few more in a snow fort or snowball fight.

The problem is the local kids are often displaced when the traffic snarls and 1000 people try to occupy a 60 x 60 foot lot. The folks from off the hill just don’t seem to get that nobody has any fun then.

Locals snowboard in the early dawn hours. Local kids play in the snow before 9am, then go home. It reminds me of when I lived in Huntington Beach. The locals surfed before 8 every day. Then the crowds came and no-one had fun.

I mean how can you surf when the surfboards are so thick in the water that you could walk on them from Huntington Beach to Laguna Beach and never get your feet wet.

We’ll know on Friday afternoon just how much police presence we’re going to have for the weekend.

It will be a good winter as long as I don’t have anybody wave a gun at me.