Is this the best you can do?” I shouted at the heavens while trudging across Fifth Avenue. The howling wind leaned against me like a brick wall toppling over, and the snow fall got thicker and thicker. “I can hack this, no problem. I’ve survived hurricanes!”
And then the sleet started to fall. That’s when I curled up in a garbage can and convinced myself I was gonna die.
I was in New York City last week for a conference on advising college newspapers. You have to try very hard, or literally be on fire, not to have a good time in New York, and even then it still would rank up there as moderately enjoyable. But sleet sure does test you. It was like someone firing BB pellets at me. Check that, it was like 13,000 people firing BB pellets at me.
I’ve seen and been in my share of snow over the years, but this Florida boy has never in his life experienced sleet. It’s like a dump truck of gravel falling from the sky.
The trip had begun with such wonderful weather. When I arrived, it was in the upper 60s and I went for a 5-mile jog in Central Park. Gorgeous. For a while I forgot I was even up north. I was quickly reminded, though, when as I was running around the reservoir and hit a cold pocket of air. Unusual, I thought, before glancing down at the water. “Odd muck,” I said to myself. “Look how shiny and congealed it seems to be. And those birds are skating across it. What kind of algae ”
Ice, you idiot! The water is iced over! You’re up north in the spring. People like you die up here!
Just the thought of an iced-over lake sent me scurrying back to the hotel where I huddled shivering in the shower with a cup of coffee and a heating pad.
The weather got worse. Thursday saw gray skies and a big drop in temperature (recollection: windy, cheeks turning red, nose cold and runny) and by Friday, the winter storm had pulled out all the stops (recollection: butt froze and fell off on 52nd Street.)
It started out pretty enough on Friday. Or as pretty as 30-degree weather can be. Lazy snowflakes sauntered across the early morning sky — a dazzling site. There’s something wonderful about light, falling snow — so casual and nonchalant, like it’s in no particular hurry. It has nowhere to go and all the time in the world to sail through the air screaming, “Weeeee!” It makes you want to be a snowflake.
It had been so long since I had seen snow, and my eyes lit up as I traipsed out of the hotel and through this floating ice ballet of falling flakes.
But it didn’t last and the sleet quickly ran the snow out of town. Sleet is angry, grumpy precipitation. It falls with determination, and is a very business-like gray. Sleet wastes no time and is on you like a swarm. It’s menacing as it pelts you and aims for your eyes. Snow gives you a tingle when it makes contact with your seeing instruments, but sleet wants to get in there and wrestle your cornea.
Because my IQ is barely double digits and I don’t know any better, I spent a fair amount of time in the afternoon trudging around in the sleet, an umbrella perched in front of my face as a shield. I slipped and slid across intersections, stepped in ice-cold puddles and I tried to explore this city I once knew as so fun and peaceful. Shoot, even muggers and pickpockets would have been appealing sights.
It’s not often I’m ready to get out of New York. It’s too amazing and too energizing a city. But the sky raining frozen pellets, whose only objective was to beam me in the eye, just about did me in. Oh, I’ll be back, but not without goggles and a flak jacket.