The best and worst of Bostonians comes out right after a snowstorm. Walking out for a cup of joe this morning, everybody said “hello”, “good morning”, etc. I probably waved and smiled at more random people this morning than the average celebrity. That was around 9am. As the day wore on and people realized what they were up against (2 hours to dig their car out, then the plow comes and buries it again, repeat), they started to get angry. Cars were honking at pedestrians in the street who had no sidewalk to walk on. People put lawn furniture in public parking spots, trying to hold a space. It doesn’t help that each person in Cambridge has their own personal car (5 or so cars for a 3-family house), so there’s already not enough room for everyone…

The snow finally stopped this afternoon, and I went out with fellow Zipcar folks to remove snow from our cars. We looked at upcoming reservations in the neighborhood and visited as many cars as we could. Among the four groups that went out, we got about 50 cars done, of 170 or so above-ground cars the Boston fleet. It felt great to get out and bust my ass with some real manual labor for once.

Tonight, outside Trader Joe’s on Mem Drive, I saw the single largest pile of snow I’ve ever encountered. No camera, so no photo, but it was probably 10 times the size of this one in the local supermarket parking lot.

It feels like an Alaskan outpost here, now more than ever.