Road Trip

Ten inches of snow forecast to fall tomorrow. Regardless of what the Eskimos might say, there are only two kinds of snowfall - the regular sort, and then the kind that causes UVA to cancel classes. When it snows here - even just a teaspoonful - all the local TV stations run a ticker tape along the bottom of the screen with a great big list of all the schools, colleges and hospitals that are going to be closed the following day. My first winter here, I was glued to the screen, waiting eagerly for "UVA: Closed" to tick up on the screen. But it never did, not even when the snow was so heavy that the normally unstoppable US postal service didn't deliver. Then last year we had a hurricane pass directly overhead. Every educational institution in the state closed for the occasion, except for UVA. UVA has apparently only appeared on the ticker once in the last twenty years. I can't imagine what could have happened that day. (I was just about to write "A plague of locusts?" but then I remembered we had one of them last year too. And yes, UVA stayed open).

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Vince's funeral was yesterday morning. It was in New Jersey, about seven hours straight drive from Middleofnowheresville. I wasn't much looking forward to it, I must confess. But somewhere on the DC Beltway, round about the time we realized the jerk in the car in front veering around and flashing its headlights was actually BobTheDawg in his Jeep also headed to NJ, I started to have a good time.

Even when we were hopelessly late, totally lost, and after seven hours driving, arrived at the funeral home for the viewing just as it was all over and everyone was coming out, I was having a good time. And later, sitting in a local roadhouse with thirty other travel-rumpled Dardenites - after I had ordered fish and chips, been surprised by the plate of fish and potato crisps that had arrived, and then fatally mistook a bottle of malt vinegar for my bottle of beer, I was still having a good time.

The following morning, I was feeling increasingly guilty about the fun I was having mourning the tragic death of one of my classmates. The service itself was conducted almost entirely in Korean, which meant we friends and colleagues were relatively dry-eyed until Vince's sister Sue and his college roommate spoke (in English) about him, and there was a barrage of sniffing and a frantic flurry of paper tissues across the back of the room. Vince's college roommate talked about how, when friends came to visit Vince, he didn't care what they actually did together because he was just so thrilled to have gathered a group of his friends. I couldn't help thinking that he would have been really pleased to see so many of us there, having a good time, and suddenly felt a whole lot less guilty about enjoying myself.

They say weddings are a great place to meet men (or women). I've never heard anyone say that funerals are a great place to meet men (or women). However, there was one very cute guy at the funeral, with a Paul McCartney 1967 haircut and a dodgy navy blue overcoat. I knew immediately I would want to discuss him here, but that of course means finding him a suitable nickname. This morning I was toying with the obvious choice, calling him FuneralGuy. But it seemed.. well, a bit gloomy. So this afternoon ScaryCzechLady came up with a brilliant solution: FunGuy, or, said with a Czech accent, Fungi. It's a bit difficult to predict, on the basis of a ten minute long graveside conversation, whether FunGuy will turn out to be a hysterical riot, but let's say the name gives him a bit more of a chance. Stay tuned....