I once lived and worked in the Delaware Valley area for almost seven years. It is the longest sentence I ever served. (For those of you who don’t know, that area includes Philadelphia, PA; Wilmington, DE; and a lot of other “garden spots.”) While I worked there it was impossible to commute to work by bike. I lived in northern Delaware and worked in Pennsylvania, a long way from the job. Any possible route to work involved long stretches of massively trafficked, narrow, shoulderless highway. It was a difficult route to drive. It would have been suicidal to attempt to bike it.
The climate, to put it mildly, stank. Summers were muggy, grey, and smelly. But the Winters! Oh my my! Winters were long, with regular “slush storms,” and a fair number of snowstorms. We would usually see snow once or twice in December, and could expect a good bit, typically four or five storms, in January, interspersed with some very clear, but incredibly cold days. February usually supplied a similar set of conditons, just a bit fewer of the “Winter mix” precip days. That was in a “normal” Winter.
My cycling was restricted to mornings, evenings, and weekends. I did utility riding, grocery shopping and such, and made longer rides when I could. I learned to ride in fresh snow. I learned to ride in slush. I learned what I could not ride in. (I’ve elsewhere recounted how the road salt pretty much destroyed a bike every Winter.) I spent a lot of time on my rollers. (In those days rollers were the only indoor trainer a real cyclist used.) Still, I did manage to spend 10 to 12 hours of each week outside. Cold, slushy, wet, slippery, occasional falling down on ice, but still outside.
Now comes the odd part. On the job, we had a total character of a production manager. His name was Cedric. He was a World War II vet. He was a model-maker of great skill. He was also a shooting sports enthusiast, and a dedicated gardener. All of those factors combined.
For several years, Cedric had been at war with a groundhog. This particular rodent lived a happy life. It foraged in Cedric’s gardens, getting fat on the findings, and wreaking havoc on Cedric’s peace of mind. For several years Cedric tried various remedies. He tried poison, to no avail. He built cunning traps, that didn’t work. He tried to shoot the critter, but the creature was too canny and too shy to be snuck up on, and Cedric missed. Repeatedly.
It was on the third day of February that Cedric came to work crowing with glee. “I got him!” he shouted to all of us on the crew. “I got the varmint!”
When asked what he was talking about, Cedric told us, he had brought a devilish plan to fruition. As the Winter had progressed, he had actually put fresh vegetable stuff out for “his” groundhog. Then he had busied himself in the front yard, so that the creature would become accustomed to going for the goodies, with the human somewhere neaby. Then, on that fatal February 2nd, Cedric had carried with him a particularly accurate singleshot pistol. He had put out the lettuce and carrots as usual, and then taken a position at the corner of the house. When the fat rodent went for the bait… BLAM! One shot. One dead rodent.
We of the crew listened to this story with polite feigned interest, until my partner, Spud Guyer exclaimed, “Ced! You shot the groundhog on February second!?”
“Yeah. So?” Cedric said.
“We know what it means if the groundhog sees his shadow, or doesn’t, but shooting him on Groundhog’s Day? That can’t be good!”
We all laughed at that, and then went on about our work.
That night, an arctic cold front arrived, dropping temperatures into the low teens. The next day’s high barely made it to 20 degrees F. Two days later, we had a major snowstorm. Nine inches of snow. I didn’t get out and ride that weekend. Instead I shoveled snow.
The cleanup from that early February snowstorm was just barely completed when the three day blizzard hit. We got close to four feet of snow out of that series of storms. The area was paralyzed. We all were blinking at the sunshine, and beginning to dig out. But wait!
The temps rose rapidly and it rained. Ordinarily, warm temps and rain, on top of snow would be a good thing. It would help to clear stuff up. But there was a lot of snow on the ground, with drifts as high as six feet. We had flooding. And the temp crashed back down to well below freezing after the rain, turning every “clear” road into a skating rink.
It went on like that. Snow. Cold. Rain and freezing rain. More snow. More cold.
I tried to ride outside, but it was completely impossible. There was nowhere to ride. The streets (the ones that were partially cleared) were too narrow. Everything was icy. I got tired of getting soaked, and spraining wrists, and breaking bike parts.
We had our last measurable snowfall (a mere eight inches) in April. There were still melting snowpiles in the parking lots at the beginning of June.
I don’t put much stock in using the Groundhog as a climate predictor, but I will say this. Do NOT kill one on the second day of February.
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