Bray Days: Snow Daze Part 2

 

I was one of the people studying for Linear Algebra during the snow battle.
 Due to my AP scores, I was allowed to skip two semesters of calculus.
Due to the differences between high school and college, we needed a crash course in Multivariate Calculus at the start of "third semester" math to catch up with the other sections on the normal schedule. 

Due to the need for that crash course we did all of Linear Algebra at an accelerated rate.
Due to the fact that it was my first time taking college classes and the professor never collected, reviewed, looked at, or most days mentioned the homework, I placed it at the lowest priority of all of my courses.
 
This would be that other lesson in study habits I mentioned. After this class, I always did and checked ALL of the homework and did ALL of the reading for every class. I never fully learned how to do Linear Algebra well, which caused bumps in the road for one or two later subjects, but I was able to push through and figure it out as I went with my improved study habits. This class was the only “C” I got in college…and that was because I aced the final.  This was unlike when I saved my Heat Transfer grade in a later year, by somehow channeling the spirit of a long dead thermodynamics professor the night before the final while making my crib sheet and suddenly understanding he entire class. The reason I aced the Linear Algebra final was due to another RPI Famous Snow related adventure.
 
The Legend of “Library Hill” was one of the first RPI legends I learned of, even before attending the school.  Behind the library, (and behind the giant new performance center now, I guess) the ground sloped away, toward 8th Street between the campus and Downtown Troy. Most other sections of the West Campus had paths, trees, or other obstructions, such as the appropriately named “West Hall.”  On the other side of 8th Street was also a hill, but trees and "The Approach" took up most of that.
 

Aside- “The Approach” was a large, impressive looking set of marble steps and columns that led the way up to campus from town. It has since been refurbished to its former impressiveness. At the time we attended, it had reached shattered, overgrown and collapsed levels rivaling the Washington D.C. scenes of Logan’s Run. A common weekend night pastime for those of us not in that crowd was watching the Downtown Bar Visitors stagger up the hill and try to navigate the approach without tumbling back down or vanishing into the several gaping holes in the steps.
 

The Legend of Library Hill referenced sledding down it on “borrowed” cafeteria trays.
 
After several winter storms, early in December…which never happen anymore, but I'm sure it doesn't mean anything (sigh)…we gathered equipment by shoving the occasional tray under our parkas after meals.
 
When our group from Bray finally picked a night to try this experiment, I became convinced the Legend of Library hill was lying to me. There was no way a normal sized human, and less way a me sized human, could fit on a single tray as a sled. I originally guessed that they must put one limb on each tray. After trying this, spread-eagling flat the way Bambi did on the frozen pond, and digging a furrow down the hill with my face, I surmised this might be an incorrect guess.
 
After that, I stuck with the circular sleds that several of my floor mates had purchased. The hill maintained the reputation of the Legend. It was a fast and smooth run, ending with about a three foot drop, “the jump,” that provided an exciting climax.
 
Being engineers, we decided to make this simple and fun pastime more complex, and naturally more dangerous. We figured out how to have all eight of us sit on five sleds, arranged in a square two rows of two, with a single sled on point between and in front of two of them. Then we barreled down the hill at a much greater rate than we had done individually, linking together by holding each other’s limbs. I was on the left side, and chose to sit on my left foot, to prevent any extra drag or inaccuracies in steering.
 
That decision was only one in a huge cascade of terrible ones.
 
I don’t know who yelled, “Let’s do the jump!” on the way down.
I do know that the other seven of us yelling, “YEEAAAHHHH!!!!”
was a continuation of that cascade of terrible ideas.
 
Clarification: Since this section of the hill had no paths, sidewalks or exits onto the 8th, technically it didn’t end with the jump. It ended several yards beyond that with a cast iron fence. We didn’t have the opportunity to notice this until the added momentum of our combined barreling.
 
What can be best described as “the scene of the crash” after the jump led to innumerable bruises, one lost pair of glasses, a strained wrist and two sprained ankles. Sitting on my foot was the reason my ankle was included in those two.
 
We all staggered and limped back to the dorm, Jesse was lucky, and sensible enough to have had work to do. I took off my boot and my foot spontaneously inflated. Shortly after this, Jesse’s Where’s Mom Now That I Need Her” book, and his actual Mom (who was a nurse) told us I should have left the boot on. Icing it wasn’t helping.  That is "the act of placing ice on my ankle." I did not try to cure my injury with cake frosting, which at that stage, likely would have been just as effective. 

It became an evening of many firsts. 

Jesse drove me to my first New York ER visit.
It was the first time I used the family insurance card on my own.
It was the first time I had an air cast.
It was my first time on crutches.
 
And it was the first time my folks got to hear the parental, gut wrenching introduction phone call starting with, “Everything is fine now, but…”
 
The positive outcome of this was: 

I was stuck off my feet for most of December, in the weeks before final exams. Therefore, I studied far more than I normally would have for the Linear Algebra final.
That’s how I aced it.
 
Bad ideas or not, the Bray group was much more about Dorm Spirit than School Spirit, like the E-Dorms would be. One of the greatest bonding moments happened during that first finals week.
 
We were young men making our own way, working out multi-level problems, memorizing complex formulas, and compiling the knowledge attained over an entire semester.
 
We were also stressed out further than we’d ever been before, away from home for an extended period for the first time in our lives, and massively sleep deprived. 

Nearly everyone kept their radios tuned to PYX 106, the local hard rock/ heavy metal station. (Or was it K-Rock? Q104? It was loud and obnoxious, that’s all that matters.) This was convenient because one could walk to the bathroom at the end of the hall and the song one was listening to would follow along for the journey.
 
That year, the band Ugly Kid Joe was getting a lot of airtime with (I Hate) "Everything About You.” Despite appearances, this was not a romantic love ballad. Due to the popularity of the tongue in cheek, entertainingly raucous rocker, other tracks off their album came over the airwaves regularly.
 
One of these, chosen just after midnight in the throes of the massive anxiety fest that is Finals Week, was their cover of Harry Chapin’s tragic ode to father and son relationships, “Cat’s in the Cradle.”
 
Shortly after the track ended, our floor bathroom was filled with “emotionless engineering men” with the need to blow our noses and wash our faces (particularly around the eyes), while telling each other in breaking voices, “I need to call my Dad tomorrow.”
 
The climax of that week was another snowy adventure, of the off campus variety. Finals came in two waves each day, morning and afternoon. Afternoon finals went all the way to Five PM.  My last Final was scheduled in the afternoon on Christmas Eve Eve. (That's not a typo, it means  the day before Christmas Eve, I thought that would save space...crap.) It was directly after my second to last final that morning. The weather forecast (and the weather itself) was snow along the entire distance I needed to travel.

 
With almost everyone else gone, there was no way I was staying away until Christmas Eve. I was going home. However, with the whole “studying for finals” thing going on, and the air cast slowing me down, I didn’t pack until after the tests.
 
The snow was by no means a news worthy storm, but I was in no way in possession of a snow worthy vehicle. (Coming someday- The Ballad of Crimson Thunder, a diary of Jeff’s car issues.)
 
My 1978 two door, V-8 Grand LeMans, was insanely front heavy. A trunk loaded with a month of laundry and three sand bags for good measure was a minor mitigation. It would still fishtail if someone spit in front of it.
 
By the time that trunk, the back seat, and the front passenger side were loaded to capacity, it was pitch dark as well as snowing. I set up calm but alert musical selections on my longest tapes for the boom box in the seat next to me, and drove towards the New York Thruway. Because of the weather, I had most of the road to myself. Overall, it would have been a pleasant and controlled journey if it weren’t for the exception of who else needed to be on the Thruway in those conditions.
 
Truck drivers hauling deliveries, with deadlines and experience prodding them to ignore any inclement effects of the road or air- that is who else needed to be on the Thruway.
 
I was using the slow and steady method, easing my way down the right lane at a safe margin below the limit. When I’d notice headlights behind me in the distance, I’d sloooooowly lift my foot off the accelerator.
 
I had enough driving experience to know thinking about touching the brakes under those conditions would send me into a skid, if not a full snow fairy pirouette. Instead, I carefully and firmly placed both feet on the floor, instituted a death grip the wheel as firmly as possible to “hold ‘er steady” and waited for the eighteen-wheeled beast to zoom by, coating Crimson Thunder with a layer of slush, gravel and salt.
 
I kept my feet down on the floor until the wipers cleared the windshield and then carefully went back to accelerating…
Until the next member of the Large Marge Fan Club came by.
 
Later year's semesters had less eventful endings, and less contact with Fraternities, he said veering back to a topic he’d deviated from for so long he almost forgot about it. In fact, after some rewrites, he may have never mentioned it at all until now.

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(After a week's surprise birthday break)

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