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.”

We didn’t get a white Christmas this winter, but we got a white Easter. If my memory is to be trusted, that’s the first Easter snow I’ve ever seen. (There was some snow in the night before Easter in 2001, but it melted away so fast that I never saw it.) It was also the coldest Easter in 44 years, with temperatures hardly getting above 5 °C (41 °F). Of course, winter weather in March is not really a peculiarity, even in the Netherlands. It’s the very early Easter (March 23rd, only one day later than the absolute earliest possibility) that made for this rare occurrence.

After sunny weather for the first half of last week, the weather turned around on Thursday. It rained for most of the day and a northerly wind brought in cooler air. The showers continued on Friday, with some wet snow and hail mixed in with the rain. Temperatures continued to drop throughout the weekend and Leiden got the first real snow on Saturday evening. More snow fell throughout the night to start off Easter Sunday with a modest layer of one, maybe two inches of white. It was above freezing during the day, so the snow was gone by noon. The evening and the night brought another round of snow showers, so Easter Monday looked pretty much the same as Sunday.

Last night, from Monday to Tuesday, was again cold and had a mix of rain, hail and snow showers. Authorities did what they could in salting the roads, but it wasn’t enough. Chaos ensued during the morning rush hour, with cars and trucks slipping on snow- or ice-covered roads. One truck broke through a guard rail on a bridge near Den Bosch and nearly slid into the Meuse river. There were traffic jams for a total length of 888 km (552 mi) at the worst moment, and that’s in a country only twice the size of New Jersey. Dutch rush hour traffic has been worse only once before: heavy snow caused 975 km (606 mi) of queues on February 8, 1999.

On days like this, it’s a good thing I always go to work by bike.

It’s remarkable how many people were cleaning the snow off the sidewalk in front of their home this morning. For whom? Outside of the immediate surroundings of the university, the supermarket and some coffee shops, I’ve only seen four pedestrians since I got here. Judging by the foot steps in the snow on my way back this evening, the sidewalks really do get used very little. So why do so many people go through the trouble of removing the snow?

My computer is running two models and while I wait for the results to roll out, I’ll grant myself a moment to write about the weekend.

On Saturday, my host, Steve, took me to the National Museum of the United States Air Force near Dayton, about two hours from Granville. Along for the ride was Steve’s son Matt, who knows an astonishing amount about military aircraft for someone who just turned five.

The museum hosts about 400 vehicles, ranging from the earliest World War I open-cockpit propeller planes through modern-day stealth fighters. The collection includes several aircraft that played a key role in history, such as the B-29 that dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki to end World War II. There are also a number of prototypes, including several X-planes.

The Boeing B-29 Superfortress “Bockscar” that ended World War II by dropping the atomic bomb on Nagasaki.

The Consolidated B-24D Liberator “Strawberry Bitch”. An American heavy bomber, the B-24 was produced in greater numbers than any other type of aircraft used in World War II.

Curtiss P-40E Kittyhawk at the United States Air Force Museum. This American fighter was used extensively in World War II, by the Americans and their allies alike.

Lockheed F-117A Nighthawk at the United States Air Force Museum. This American ground attack aircraft from the end of the Cold War was the first plane initially designed around stealth technology.

Steve and his wife invited me to a concert by Scott Ainslie in Granville that night. Ainslie is a blues and folk musician, a musical historian and a great story-teller. I’ll admit that blues and folk are not high on my list of favourite musical genres, but that didn’t keep me from enjoying the concert. In fact, it wasn’t just a concert, and that’s what made it so much fun. Ainslie told as much stories as he played songs, and he spoke with a passion that made it impossible not to appreciate his tales.

I spent Sunday evening watching part of the first NFL semi-final and the entire second semi-final. Yes, that’s American football: a sport I never understood and never saw more than a few minutes of. (It’s easy to go without American football in the Netherlands, because there are only a handful of clubs and it’s hardly ever shown on tv.) It turns out that the rules are quite simple and once I knew what they were doing, I actually enjoyed watching the games.

The NFL regular season runs from September to early January, followed by a series of play-off games and the big finale, better known as the Superbowl. The Sunday games were effectively the semi-finals, and the winners will play in the Superbowl on February 3rd, the second-to-last night of my visit to the US.

A great fuss was created by the media over the cold weather in which the second semi-final was played. At -1 °F (-18 °C), it was the third coldest game ever in NFL history. However, the only people that were affected by the low temperatures were the FOX Sports reporters. Many of the players only had short sleeves and some didn’t even have gloves. Except for a few instances of cramps, they were doing just fine. The spectators were doing fine, too. I mean, do these women look like it was actually that cold?

• One prejudice about the US seems be true, at least in Granville: everyone has a car. During my 90-minute walk yesterday morning, I encountered a grand total of two other pedestrians. Both were elderly people.
• Cars here are less noisy than in Europe. Could it be the automatic transmission?
• I underpaid at the supermarket Thursday night! Not on purpose, obviously, and I only noticed it when I was back at the B&B. I had to pay $15.50, so I gave the lady a $10 bill, a $5 bill and what I believed to be a 50-cent coin. However, I later realized the coin was a quarter.
• Winter weather comes everywhere I go. In November, early snow showers hit Heidelberg during my visit. The temperature never got above freezing while I was in Garching in December. It’s the same in Granville so far: sub-zero (or sub-32 on that other scale) since I got here. It’s -7 °C (20 °F) at the moment and the temperature for tonight is expected to drop down to as low as -18 ° C (0 °F).