Saturday, November 13, 2004

Typical New England Weather

It started raining yesterday and the precipitation changed gradually to snow as the temperature dropped. There were almost two inches of white stuff on the car in the train station parking lot when I came home yesterday. It continued throughout the night and we ended up with at least six inches in Franklin this morning.

I had planned on getting the snow thrower ready this weekend. I got a reason to do so early this morning. The high school cross country team bus was scheduled to leave at 8:45 AM to head for the division championship meet on the Franklin Park course in Boston. Hopefully, they ended up with less snow. Cross country is a "real" sport and not one to be canceled lightly.

So the snow thrower started, the driveway eventually was cleared, and I did some clean up work with the shovel to keep my arms and shoulders in shape. Carolyn found her team captain had an IM away message that indicated the bus was leaving at 8:30 so we left the house in a hurry to make this adjusted schedule. She did make the bus, others were not so fortunate to see the away message, and they arrived as previously scheduled for 8:45.

Last week the course was full of the autumn colors, leaves all over the trails, the grass green in the sunlight. This week, a new world. White. Cold. Quiet. Colorful as the team uniforms provided the rainbow decorations. The start of each division race (four divisions arranged by school size, boys and girls running separately) was a picture. The rainbow spraying against the white background and grey sky, moving as the runners made their way quickly to the cheers of their teammates, coaches, parents, etc.

Two or three races into the meet and the orange cones marking the course were standing out against the white. Along one side of the cones, it was still a pristine white. The other side was trampled snow, browning, breaking here and there to reveal, yes, there is some green grass underneath this cover.

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