What I Saw – February 4, 2014

Folks have come up with some ingenious (and mundane) ways to reserve the parking spaces they’ve shoveled out . . . 
 With traffic cones

With a trash hopper – and a bag of trash
(That way, you can say you were just setting out the trash.)

 A chair, and a more elaborate one across the street

 A plastic bucket

 Another trash hopper

  Another chair

 The bench is back.

And finally, a nifty bench-hopper combo

Vehicles are supposed to have all snow removed before being driven.

Columbia declares snow emergency

Columbia Borough has declared a snow emergency beginning at 4 p.m. Monday and remaining in effect until further notice.

Mayor Leo Lutz said parking is prohibited on these snow emergency routes:

Locust Street, Front to Fifth streets;
North Third Street, Locust to Cedar streets;
Chestnut Street, Second to Fifth streets;
North Fifth Street, Chestnut to Locust streets;
Lancaster Avenue, Locust Street to Malleable Road;
Kinderhook Road;
Ironville Pike, Ninth Street to Borough Limit;
Ninth Street, Ironville Pike to Lancaster Avenue.
Parking is available in borough parking lots at Front and Locust Streets, next to Borough Hall on Locust and in the former telephone company lot in Avenue H between 2nd and 3rd Streets.

Yes, it's frozen

I took this pic today, when the temperatures were more, well, temperate. It must have been all of 25° out.
But try taking pics on a single-digit day, and you’ll find that the term “bone-chilling” is not just metaphorical. After a few minutes, your finger bones – phalanges, as they’re known – actually become chilled (or at least that’s how it feels), due to the exceedingly thin layers of skin, fat, and muscle covering them.

Benched!

I haven’t seen this done in a while.  It’s illegal, but I understand the motivation to do it.  After shoveling out a parking space, you don’t want to just give it away.  On the other hand, how can you justify keeping the space unavailable the whole time you’re not there?