DJ's Sooner Stories

End of the Semester Part 1: Snow Days

After a four month roller coaster ride of exciting adventures and grueling workloads, I am finally back home from Oklahoma. The past three weeks in particular have been incredibly exciting. Upon coming back to Oklahoma that Sunday, I was stoked for the upcoming weekend. In an amazing turn of events, Texas A&M beat Texas 12-7 and OU beat OSU, which was slightly more expected, and both those events allowed the team to go to the Big XII championship. Luckily, my friends and I reserved tickets for it a week earlier in the event that it occurred. Monday evening, I came back to my room to discover my suitemates moving out, leaving the bathroom and their room all to me. Tuesday morning during my OWL shift we spent two hours discussing the impending thunder/freezing rain/sleet/snow storm that was going to hit Wednesday and Thursday. One of the guys in my shift predicted 6 to 12 inches for Norman. I was slightly more conservative with three to six. We were stoked for it. As I rode my bike back from calculus class Tuesday, I thought the week could not get any better. Then I turned a little too fast coming off the ramp by the library, hit a muddy patch of sidewalk, lost traction, and fell off my bike as it slid to the side. I ended up spraining my wrist and scraping up my left arm and leg. So much for the perfect week.

I would not let a little thing like a sprained wrist stop me from experiencing the biggest weather event of the year firsthand. Wednesday morning I walked to my physics lab and doctor's appointment through cold rain. It continued throughout the day until after film class when my friends and I walked out side to find the entire campus covered in a layer of ice. We slid around on the sidewalks for awhile before taking a hot chocolate break at the Union where we found out that school would be cancelled the next day. For a couple more hours, we slid around on the sidewalks and picked frozen flowers from the garden. That morning I looked out my window to find the campus to be covered in a light layer of snow. After all my friends woke up, we went out into the snow. A friend of mine brought his snowboard along and rode it down the passion pit while attempting to jump a bench. He had some success. Then a friend with a bike came by and some of us rode up and down the sidewalk of the south oval on the snowboard while being pulled by the bike. There were a few falls but nothing serious. We went inside for a little while to warm up, and in there we noticed the snow picking up greatly in intensity. Not wanting the miss this, we rushed outside and went sledding on the hill by the Huff. The windchill dropped to 1 due to the 30 mph winds, which we meteorology kids enjoyed greatly until our fingertips started feeling numb. Then we went inside for some much desired warmth and dinner. Once more we ventured out, this time to campus corner. Along the way we ran into more people and sat in snowbanks and stood on clocks, enjoying the tranquil Norman night. Appropriately we ended the evening with a group viewing of Naitonal Lampoon's Christmas Vacation.

Friday I stayed inside and did some cleaning around the room before walking down to the Weather Center with some friends to view a weather balloon launch. They could not do one that morning since the lock on the helium cage had frozen over along with the keycard access slot on the balloon shed door. This balloon took off without a hitch. Thankfully we got a ride back into town before heading up to campus corner to grab dinner at Louie's and some coffee and tea from the coffee shop there before heading back to the dorms. The night had only begun, however. My friends and I went up to Super Target to pick up some supplies for our trip to Kansas City. I got a bunch of snacks and they picked up poster supplies. We all made up some posters for the game. Mine said, "Nebraska shucks!" I eventually got to bed in preparation for the long day that would be facing us. Coming up next, the trip to the Big XII Championship, meeting Rick Mitchell, pranks and stunts among the guys on the fourth floor, a not-so-dead dead week, and finally, finals.

posted by DJ @ 10:52 AM