NYC Declares Snow Emergency, But Some Can't Resist Playing in the Snow

I've been a huge Keith Snyder fan since I got The Nightmen for Christmas one year. It is a brilliant book, still up there in my favorites of all time and it led me to Coffin's got the Dead Guy Inside which had me laughing out loud in my sisters apartment as she slept in the next room. I lay on the couch all night, stifling giggles and holding my sides.

Anyway, Keith, author, musician and bicycling demon, is a very nice and determined man, as is evidenced by his latest escapade which I've copied below.

Dignity. Always dignity.

So there I am, tired of leg, serene of spirit, cold of toe, bright of eye, four blocks from home after my annual First Blizzard of the Year Bicycle Pilgrimage to Forest Park. I'm riding on the sidewalk because I got tired of stopping every 30 seconds for cars, and a guy steps out of a dark blue Eyewitness News van and aims a video camera at me. I know a "weirdos who go out in blizzards" news story when I be one, so I grin at the guy, and the van window rolls down and a pretty reporter asks if they can talk to me.

Sure, I say. So first I wait while they get footage of a man and his cute baby, and then we do a short interview. I manage a semi-funny line or two, which I figure might make it onto the air. They've been gathering footage in various locations all day, so there's a lot of competition, I'm sure, for what can't be that much airtime.

But I believe I will be on the 11:00 Eyewitness News tonight. Despite the competition, despite the cute baby... I believe they're going to choose me. Why, you say? Why, Keith? Was it your clever, off-the-cuff badinage? Your funny asides to the camera? The sparkle in your cold-quickened demeanor?

No. It's that while they were getting footage of me riding away, I fell over sideways in the snow.

Eyewitness News New York. 11:00 PM tonight.

And it was. On Channel 7 for all to see.