The winter has been very mild so far, with little snow and midday temperatures no lower than -5 °C (23 °F) or so. My memories from last year are filled with ankle-deep blankets of snow lingering for days at -15 °C (5 °F). Going through older blog entries, I can see we had those conditions (and worse), but not until February. The first two weeks after my arrival on January 3rd, 2011, were not much more wintery than the weather right now.

Of course, that’s not to say it isn’t winter, and nature has responded in her usual way of bare trees and birds migrating to warmer climes. Melissa and I put up a bird feeder outside the living room window, and the birds that haven’t left are making good use of it—especially when it snows. There’s a flock of sparrows spending the nights in a cedar bush next to the house and every morning they head over to the feeder for breakfast. The record so far is nine sparrows sitting down at once, accompanied by much squeaking and wing-flapping. Sparrows may look cute, but they’re quite vicious: they keep trying to push each other off, sometimes flying up from a little distance and knocking another, sometimes pecking at one another with their little beaks.

Other visitors to the feeder include a couple of chickadees and five or six cardinals (three male, two or three female) and, rather surprisingly, a hairy woodpecker (haarspecht). The hairy is a medium-sized woodpecker, growing to about 25 cm or 10 in. The feeder is shaped like a tube and is maybe 40 cm (16 in) tall, so the hairy woodpecker pretty much dwarfed the thing and was unable to get much out of it. It sat on the feeder for a while, undecisive, before flying off again. We haven’t seen it since, but we liked it so much that we’re going to put up a larger feeder to try and attract more of its kind.

Speaking of woodpeckers, I went out for a walk yesterday at Parker Mill Park (just east of AA) and spotted a red-bellied woodpecker (roodbuikspecht):

Let me take this opportunity to point out that bird names, in my opinion at least, do not always make sense. The red-bellied’s belly isn’t really red, nor is the hairy’s plumage in any way hairy. If an ornithologist or other expert happens to read this, feel free to enlighten me.

Click here for some more recent bird pictures…

Winter isn’t over yet, but signs of its impending end are getting stronger. It’s no longer 0 °F or -20 °C at night—it’s only 15 °F or -10 °C. Five- and ten-inch snow storms have made way for two-inch storms mixed with an inch of rain. And birds that spent the winter down south are migrating back to their breeding grounds up north. Some of them stop over in Michigan for a day or two, where the ice on lakes and rivers is just melting. The opening waters also draw birds that live here year round out of hiding. It made Ann Arbor’s Geddes Pond a rewarding place to visit with my camera yesterday.

Close-up of a trumpeter swan.

Click here to see more pictures…

Although public transport within Ann Arbor is quite alright for getting to and from the university on weekdays, it isn’t of much use for anything during the weekend, when the buses in my neighborhood run only once an hour. So, in spite of the snow and cold outside, I’ve gone shopping for a bike. I happen to live close to Wheels in Motion, one of Ann Arbor’s better bike shops, and the folks there were very helpful in finding me the right bike. They were also very patient and forgiving of my lack of American cycling vocabulary. It happened twice that they suggested a type of bike or piece of equipment to which I responded enthusiastically, only to realize when they showed the bike or item in question that it was something different than what I had thought. (Similar moments have occurred in other shops. For all my fluency in scientific and everyday English, it’s interesting to discover how many words I don’t know in other areas of the language.) Still, it didn’t take too long to settle down on the FX 7.2 by Trek. It’s a fitness bike, or at least so I’m told. Whatever its designation, it looks to serve me well on my daily commute to campus, as well as on the occasional 20- or 30-mile ride.

I picked up the bike Thursday evening and immediately chickened out of riding it the next morning, because it felt like the bloody coldest morning I’ve had here yet. For which of course I got made fun of by my nice friends on Facebook — and never mind that the real reason was that I wanted to try the route first on a non-work day. So, despite even lower temperatures on Saturday, I went ahead and biked to campus for the first time. First, though, I went for a short warm-up run to the grocery store. An elderly man there remarked it was quite cold for cycling, recalling he’d never ridden below 18 °F (-8 °C). I had just faced something like 5 °F (-15 °C), with wind chill in the negative F, so I beat him by a fair margin.

The three-mile ride to campus was not too bad as far as the cold went. In fact, there was one nasty hill that had me sweating as on a summer’s day by the time I reached the top. The downhill return would have been fun if the road surface were in better condition. As it was, it was something of a challenge to dodge cracks, potholes and patches of ice at 20 mph on an unfamiliar bike, with a freezing wind battering my eyes to tears.

Yesterday morning, with the temperature up to 11 °F (-12 °C), I took a slightly different route to avoid that hill and also to avoid the moderately heavy traffic on Saturday’s route. The attempt was successfull on both counts, although the quieter roads do mean poorer road conditions now that there’s been some snowfall again. The additional twisting and turning also increases the likelihood of me getting lost, especially cycling home in the dark — which didn’t take long to actually happen. I added an extra mile and a half to yesterday’s homeward journey by missing a turn and not recognizing an intersection later on where I could have fixed my initial mistake with minimal damage. I suppose it’s a good way to get to know the city a bit, but I’d rather do that in warmer weather. Note for tonight: check the map extra carefully before heading home.

Check out a couple of videos I shot yesterday in my cold and snowy hometown. There’s my cycling through the snow, ducks trying to climb onto a thin sheet of ice, ducks landing and sliding on ice, and some vicious battles between dozens of ducks, coots and gulls for a few pieces of bread.

Click here to see the videos…

With the whole country covered in an unusually thick blanket of snow, train travel has been difficult for the past few days. I can live with that. I can understand and accept that at some point, weather conditions become too extreme for normal railway operations to continue. What I don’t understand is why accurate and up-to-date information is so hard to come by.

I was at Leiden Central Station this morning to catch the 10:22 intercity to Utrecht to visit a friend. I had checked the Dutch Railways’ website before leaving my apartment and it didn’t mention any significant problems. The monitors at the station listed the 10:22 as scheduled for an on-time departure. However, a different monitor warned against major disruptions in and around Utrecht.

Confused, I headed over to the information desk and asked the lady on duty whether she had any details on the situation at Utrecht. She simply pointed at the monitor with departing trains and said the 10:22 would leave on time. I pointed at the text on the other monitor and said I’d like to be sure the train would actually make it to Utrecht. Her response was that all she knew was what was on the monitors.

My jaw probably dropped at this point. I mean, for crying out loud. Really? If she knows nothing more than the monitors, than what is she doing there? I asked her that flat out, which of course wasn’t much appreciated. Well, excuse me for being a dick, but this is simply beyond me. I don’t need her to read the monitors for me, I need her to do her job as a Railways employee and make some effort to help a confused traveler. If she can’t do that, or doesn’t want to, she should have stayed at home. It would have made both of us happier.

I trudged off before I said something really nasty and called my friend to tell him I wasn’t going to risk getting stranded in the polder between Leiden and Utrecht. Being the good friend that he is, he offered to drive to Leiden instead, thus saving our last chance to hang out together before I move to the US.

But the story doesn’t end there. Now, at the end of the day, I was going through the news feed from one of the Dutch newspapers. At 8:37, an hour and a half before I arrived at Leiden Central, they posted an item titled “Train traffic from Utrecht disrupted”. The item mentioned, by way of a Railways spokesperson, that all trains to and from Utrecht were canceled or running at severe delays, and passengers for Utrecht were advised to postpone their journey until further notice.

Why did the grumpy Railways lady in Leiden not know this? If it’s on a newspaper website at 8:37, how can she still not have heard of any problems by 10:15? (Not because the problems had been solved by then, because they weren’t until well into the afternoon.)

So, there you have it. On the one hand, information about major disruptions is available to the press, but not to the Railways employees that deal with the travelers. On the other hand, employees don’t make an effort to actually answer a reasonable request for information. I can live with the disruptions as such; it’s not being told of them that drives me mad.

Following a beautiful morning in Austin, TX (sunny, 20+ °C), I flew into a major storm in Phoenix, AZ. For a while, it actually looked like I wasn’t flying into Phoenix at all, given the weather conditions. But we did, so I got to experience what it feels to land in 25 mph crosswinds, with gusts up to 35 mph. Not too much fun, I’ll tell you.

From the airport to the hotel, I shared a shuttle with two guys whose flights out of Phoenix got cancelled. Indeed, inbound and outbound flights got cancelled all over the board. Mine was one of the few that still got in this afternoon. The shuttle driver had been watching incoming flights for a while, and had seen many aborted landings. Made me feel good that we touched down on the first attempt.

I’m in my hotel now, comfortably sheltered against the wind and rain, and watching the news on tv. They’re calling it the storm of the century; given that it’s the worst storm since at least 1993, that moniker is correct, albeit a tad premature. Phoenix is getting record amounts of rain, apparently the most in a single day since people started keeping track. Further north, the city of Flagstaff is getting a feet or two of snow. Elsewhere, the abundant precipitation is causing floods, and that’s expected to get worse over the next few days.

I was going to go on a bus tour to the Grand Canyon tomorrow, but it’s exceedingly unlikely that that will still happen. Authorities are strongly advising people not to travel. If the tour company decides to go on with the tour, I’ll assume it’s safe enough and I’ll go. If they cancel, I guess I’ll be stuck in my hotel for a day, because I’m sure as hell not gonna rent a car and go anywhere on my own. It’s too bad I’ll miss out on the Grand Canyon, but that’s the way life is sometimes.

For about three years now, I’ve been umpiring baseball games in the Dutch leagues. So far this has been in the Third and Second Divisions, as well as the top level of the 16-18 age group. People generally tell me I’m doing a good job, and my efforts were rewarded last week with an assignment to work a game in the Rookie League. This league is sort of what AAA is to MLB in the States. It consists of the rookie teams from the eight Hoofdklasse (the Dutch Major League) clubs. It’s a springboard for players in their late teens or early twenties to get to the highest level. In many ways, it serves the same purpose for young umpires.

My excitement over being assigned my first Rookie League game last until a few hours before game time on Sunday, when it became clear the weather was going to be a problem. I did make my way to the field, but I might as well have stayed at home. My Rookie League debut turned into a rain-out. By the time the skies cleared, the field looked like a swimming pool. No way we could play the game that night.

But not to worry… I had another debut pending. Tonight, I was supposed to work my first game in the First Division. The level of play there is similar to that in the Rookie League, being only one step below the Hoofdklasse, but it consists of teams from clubs that don’t play at the highest level. For umpires, it serves much the same purpose as the Rookie League: it’s an important step on the way to the top.

Well, the “supposed” from the previous paragraph already gave it away: my First Division debut also became a rain-out. The weather and the field conditions were as bad as on Sunday, except they were even worse tonight.

I’ve got another Rookie League assignment on Friday. It looks like it’s going to be a bit drier by then, but there’s still a fifty percent chance of rain for the day. I sure hope we’ll stay on the dry side of that 50/50 prediction, because I don’t want to go 3-for-3 in rained-out debuts.

On the plus side, I’m completely error-free so far in the Rookie League and the First Division.

[Update: The First Division game has been rescheduled for next week, and I'm again assigned as base umpire. Good weather that day would be much appreciated.]

Yesterday was certainly an interesting day. Not only did NASA announce the strongest evidence yet that there might be microbial life on Mars, it was also the first time I celebrated my birthday outside the Netherlands. In many parts of the US, it was the coldest day in thirty or so years. The highest temperature reached in Granville was -13 °C (9 °F), making it my coldest birthday ever. (From what I can find in Dutch weather archives, the former record holder was 1985 with a relatively balmy daily high of -8 °C. My warmest birthday so far was in 1993, when thermometers reached 13 °C.) And then there was the crash landing on the Hudson River yesterday: the first time ever that an underwing-engined commercial airliner landed on water without any fatalities. Truly astonishing!

Oh, and if you think yesterday was cold, it’s even more so today. Walking up to the university this morning, it was -25 °C (-13 °F). That’s the sort of weather that makes you feel glad mankind invented clothes.

We finally got in a spring training game. Weather has been pretty abysmal throughout March, and none of our scheduled games took place. With all the rain we got yesterday, I wasn’t sure when I went to bed whether we could play today. Fortunately, we could. It was still cold (around 10 °C or 50 °F), but the sun shone the whole time, so it felt nice enough.

I’m in a different team this year than I was last year and I’m playing in a league at one level down. The alternative was to play one level up, because we won the championship last September and earned a promotion to a higher league. I think I’ll have more fun at the lower level, so I opted to switch teams.

I was back at my favourite position for the first part of today’s game: shortstop. It looks like I’ll be playing there most of the time this year. I’ll also spend time on the pitcher’s mound, either in relief, or as a starter if our regular guy is unavailable. I pitched the last two innings today to get some game vibe at that position as well. The results were mixed. I allowed one unearned run the first inning, but my control took an early exit and I could hardly throw a strike the second inning. I’ll have to work on that.

On the offensive side, I wasn’t faring much better. I was too eager in my first at-bat and went fishing on a slow 1-2 pitch for a third strike. I hit a grounder to short the next two at-bats, both of which got booted by the shortstop for a reached-on-error. I ran into another strike-out my last time up when I couldn’t check my swing on a high 2-2 pitch. That came after fouling off four pitches, so combined with the ground balls, the good news is I’m seeing the ball and making contact.

The competition starts next Sunday. This one spring training game will have to do to be ready for it.

Winter weather always seems to cause trouble for the Dutch railways. All train traffic to and from Rotterdam, the Netherlands’ second-largest city, was halted this morning–during rush hour, no less–because a series of switches had frozen shut. All railroad switches are equipped with heaters, to prevent exactly this from happening. The heaters should turn on automatically when it gets cold or when it snows, but this time, they didn’t. According to a spokesperson from ProRail, the company that maintains the switches and other railroad hardware, we “got the wrong kind of snow today, so the automated heaters didn’t respond.”

Say what?

“If it’s cold and white, and comes falling from the sky as flakes, then it’s snow,” said a spokesperson from Rover, an independent organization representing users of public transport. And whatever kind of snow it happens to be, you would expect the switch heaters to work. Besides, today’s snow was of a very ordinary sort, weather officials said.

I’m generally quite happy with the Dutch railway system (contrary to Rover, who never do anything but complain), but ProRail really messed things up today. The Rover spokesperson summarized the situation nicely:

“We understand there will be problems with the railroad infrastructure when there’s a metre of snow, or it’s 25 degrees below zero, or there’s a hurricane,” he said. “But a few centimetres of snow in above-zero temperatures should never be the reason for a total loss of railway traffic.”