Leslie and I are still fighting to get back to the kids after being stranded in New Orleans after all flights were cancelled. We are safe but had a wild night trying to find a way home.
Despite the fact that the weather was mild on Sunday and Monday morning in Washington, US Airways cancelled our flights. It was very frustrating to speak to friends in Washington and hear how the weather was fine. The cancellations appeared to be decisions based on the location of equipment, but thousands of passengers could have made it home. The main problem however at US Airways was the virtual collapse of any customer assistance that continued to Monday. We had to wait literally hours on the telephone to get through and then had to wait over an hour on hold to reach anyone. US Airways then told us that we would have to buy a separate ticket to go to closer airports like Charlotte (it didn’t matter since those were cancelled as well.) I remain furious with US Airways which (despite plenty of forewarning) did not appear to set up sufficient personnel or resources to assist passengers. We literally spent 24 hours from Sunday to Monday trying to reach someone at the airline, which has a message that repeatedly cut off calls and told them to call back.
With four kids with our sitter in Virginia, we could not wait any longer so I rented a four-wheel drive jeep and set out Sunday morning from New Orleans. We made it 700 miles when we were hit last night with a blinding blizzard storm in the mountains of Virginia. Visibility dropped quickly to virtually zero and we barely got off the highway. We found a motel in a tiny town called Marion, Virginia and bunkered down.
We are going to set out again shortly to try to get to the kids. A lot of roads are cut off with debris and winds remain high in McLean at 37 miles per hour. However, there are signs of it winding down. The kids are fine and still remarkably have electricity. We are prepared however. In Alabama, we bought boxes of water and Moon Pies (which we can’t get around us in McLean). If anything goes wrong, we can survive on Moon Pies for days in the mountains!
I hope all of our regulars on the East Coast are safe and sound today.
Twinkie Story: My kid was living in Virginia going to school at UVA. I visited him and tried to do “sustenance things” to supplement his pizza diet. I generally shopped at a “bakery outlet” that sold day-old goods for any bakery items, getting pepperidge farm etc. inexpensively. One day they had a form at the register to fill out for a “contest” for a year’s worth of free baked goods. I imagined somehow that it would be a year’s worth of the baked goods of your CHOICE. I put in my son’s name and phone number. A week later he got a call and somebody told him that he had won a year’s worth of free twinkies. Since he is kind of a health food nut (except for the pizzas), he immediately identified the call as a prank call from a friend of his who had put a girlfriend up to immitating a Virginia accent to make the prank call. He laughed his head off and told the shocked store clerk, “Tell Waseem to get his ass over here to eat those twinkies for me because I’ve got to be careful to preserve my girlish figure.” The poor clerk couldn’t figure out what was going on so she thanked him and told him how to pick up his twinkies (one package per week for a year!).
When he told me I had another fit laughing, and then we told Waseem and he did the same. In the end he picked up those twinkies and distributed them to the kids in the neighborhood, who really appreciated that! Recently he told me that if he gets to the pearly gates and they ask for a list of his sins against humanity he will have to say, “I poisoned innocent children for a year.”
Blouise,
It looks like your area got hit much harder than mine. I hope all will be back to normal soon for you.
for those trying to reach me thru email … power and internet are spotty … on and off Big mess here … trees down, flooding homes damaged etc
Moon pies. I had to look them up. I’ve had them but it must have been a verrrry long time ago, probably before I traveled out of NYS. So they must have been here in the 50s or maybe the 60s. I’ll have to look for them.
Woosty,
Maybe you’ve never tasted a really good whoopie pie!
I make a sour cream chocolate cake that I frost with homemade whoopie pie filling and cover with a bittersweet chocolate glaze for holidays and special occasions. It is a favorite with both my family and my friends.
OS,
Not much north of the mason Dixon line….
Moon Pies are still being made at the original plant in Chattanooga, TN. You can buy them at most grocery stores in the south. I don’t know about other parts of the country. Every truck stop and convenience store seems to carry them. And of course, you can get Moon Pies and other merchandise online, including a tub of RC Colas and double-decker Moon Pies.
http://moonpie.com/
If you have had a moonpie lately, you will remember why you can’t get them in most civilized venues. You can, however, get them at a 7-11 in Reston (Old Reston Road, I think — it’s on the W&OD trail) and at Partlows in Ashburn (also on the bike trail).
As Clinton points out, Romney’s making fun of rising oceans and Obama does not sound so funny now.
“In jersey anythings legal as long as you don’t get caught”
Drill baby drill done been caught, eh Sandy?
http://www.tnr.com/blog/plank/109393/hurricane-sandy-fema-infrastructure-government-fugate-romney-obama Sandy’s lesson for the voters…..government matters.
Any doubt that Moon Pies are made of ground up Twinkies?
Get in touch with your inner Twinkie dawg!
Moonpies are very similiar….but much tastier.. and essential for linear tasks!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_pie
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dv2AfBwbsB4&w=560&h=315%5D
Any doubt that Hurricane Superstorm Catastrophe Maker Sandy was a child of global warming induced climate change?
Any doubt that we will see orders of magnitude worse?
Dig addiction to BAU.
Any doubt of causal logic?
Dig systemic science:
(Dr. Lakoff). Hell, just dig it for heaven sake.
Woosty & Otteray,
I think Moon Pies are similar to whoopie pies, aren’t they?
Woosty,
I remember when lunch was a Moon Pie and an RC cola. RC had an advertisement: “12 fluid ounces, that’s a lot” and just five cents. That was when a seven ounce bottle of all other soft drinks were also a nickel. Moon Pies don’t take up much space, weigh almost nothing, don’t spoil in the summer heat and require no preparation other than unwrapping.
Survival food.
Any doubt that Sandy was a mean storm, check this out; http://www.google.com/imgres?num=10&hl=en&rlz=1C1LENN_enUS444US445&biw=910&bih=400&tbm=isch&tbnid=dSc2nOBaCn-onM:&imgrefurl=http://popeyesview.blogspot.com/&docid=o2s_3DFz0Sx96M&imgurl=http://sphotos-a.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/282301_526442067385272_2100950690_n.jpg&w=579&h=442&ei=6xmQUOa3Mcn-qwGQ24GQAw&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=430&vpy=62&dur=1510&hovh=196&hovw=258&tx=162&ty=134&sig=105151498708026177967&sqi=2&page=1&tbnh=140&tbnw=204&start=0&ndsp=8&ved=1t:429,i:77
OS, I haven’t had a Moon Pie in years…now I have a strange craving…..
and I miss my Jeeps……
Woosty,
Moon Pies are the perfect survival food. Enough calories in just one Moon Pie to keep you going for a day and a half.
Has anyone heard from JT since early this morning? He was about a six hour drive from home when he had to spend the night at Marion. Hope they are not running into bad driving conditions.
I just went up to a little town on the NC/TN border near the Virginia line. They had quite a lot of snow and it was still coming down hard. The slush on the road was not too bad, but I was in the 4×4 Jeep and it has all weather tires. I noticed some rear-wheel drive cars slipping and sliding. That is the worst part. With 4-wheel drive and plenty of weight, you have things under control, but the other guy does not, and you end up feeling as if you have a big target painted on you.