GeekDads Unite and Fight the Snow

Last Saturday afternoon was GeekDad day at the Wired Holiday Store in New York City.

I played chicken with the weekend blizzard and traveled down to New York City for the day. It is not often that the GeekDad contributors, strewn across the U.S. (and the U.K.), are able to get together in person. So the stakes were high.

As of Friday night, the powerful winter storm was moving slow. It was hitting Washington hard. But it looked like it would hold off on covering Boston with the white stuff until late Saturday night. It looked like I could get down to New York and back, beating the snow.

The trip down was uneventful, but I could see the storm clouds just south of New York City.

Ken Denmead, the editor of GeekDad, had hosted the first GeekDad on December 2. See Ken’s post: GeekDad Day at the Wired Holiday Store FTW.

Ken came back from the west coast, along with Matt Blum, the assistant editor, and Dave Giancaspro. Matt escaped Washington just before the blizzard hit that area. Dave was just a subway ride away.

We ran some LEGO building contests to give away prizes to a group of enthusiastic kids and their parents. The winning builders walked away with LEGO Star Wars Hyena Droid kits Bomber, copies of LEGO Star Wars: The Visual Dictionary, MythBusters Weird World of Water kits, and Mythbusters DVDs.

You can see more images from the day in my photo album: GeekDad at the Wired Holiday Store.

By the afternoon, the snow was upon us. Ken’s airline called him to let him know that his flight on Sunday morning was canceled, but they would be happy to re-book his flight for Friday. (FRIDAY!)

For me, I went to Penn Station and saw carnage. The Northbound trains from NYC to Boston come out of Washington and they were not getting out. I re-booked from the 7:00 train to the 3:00 train since the 3:00 had not yet arrived. I though that was clever until I sat down across from a very tired gentleman who was still waiting for the 2:00 train. This looked bad.

Upstairs, Megabus was willing to get me to Boston for $20 and claimed that the buses were running on time. The weather forecast for Boston called for the storm to hold off until midnight, the Boston arrival time for that bus. I had visions of the bus getting stuck in a blizzard in Connecticut or sliding off the road. That’s the reason I booked the train trip. Of course, when I went back down into Penn Station I had visions of not getting home at all by train.

I crossed my fingers and jumped on the bus.

The roads in the city were snowy. I-95 was snowy. Those visions of being trapped on the highway in a blizzard came back.

But then we turned north onto I-91 and the snow disappeared. We had blacktop and highway speeds all the way to Boston. Sure enough the snowflakes started in Boston right at midnight just as I arrived home.