Digging Out

TigerBlog is pretty sure that only five people have given him about 99% of his lifetime's haircuts, or at least his haircuts of the last 45 years or so.

There was the guy named Tom, the one whose son was a professional tennis player. He cut TB's hair from grade school through middle school and high school and then after college for awhile.

There was the woman in Houston Hall at Penn. Do they still have a barbershop there? TigerBlog looked it up on the Penn website but couldn't find anything about it.

Houston Hall is the student center at Penn. Back when TB was there, it was home to a record store (records, remember those?), a few places to eat, some meeting rooms, a giant common area and possibly a McDonald's. And a decent pizza place. Maybe it wasn't a McDonald's. TB can't remember.

Meanwhile, back at the haircuts, there was also a barber shop near the Lawrenceville School. TigerBlog went there a few times, until he stumbled upon a guy named John at another barber shop about 20 years ago.

Since then, John has been TB's go-to barber. John grew up in Russia and has had a pretty interesting life, as you might expect.

It takes John about six minutes to cut TB's hair. It took Tom a lot longer, but TB had a lot more hair back then.

TigerBlog went to John's shop Friday morning, when it was a bit eerie outside. It was cold but clear, with no wind.

The heaviest thing in the air at the time was the forecast for the coming blizzard, one that was to bring snow, heavy wind, widespread power outages, even lightning to the area starting a few hours later. At that time, though, it was clear and business as usual.

Of course, supermarkets were swamped. TigerBlog doesn't understand the hording, but oh well. The worst storms ever have set TB back three days at most.

John is not a fan of snow, even if he is from Russia. He said how much he preferred the 70 degrees it was on Christmas. He talked about retiring and moving to Hawaii, where it's summer all year round. What could be better than that, he asked. Then he wondered why people in Florida complain about the heat and humidity.

Then his six minutes with TB were over. Then, a few hours later, the blizzard arrived.

And once it arrived, well, it was wild. Record-setting wild.

More than two feet of snow fell in Princeton. Even more fell in other areas nearby. New York City had its biggest single snow total ever with more than 26 inches.

The shore didn't get much snow, but it did get incredible rain and wind, which led to incredible flooding.

The 10-day forecast suggests most of the snow should be gone shortly, with sunny skies and temps in the 40s for the most part. If this turns out to be the only big snowfall of the year, that'll be fine with TigerBlog.

On a normal winter weekend, a storm like this would have forced major scrambling to reschedule games, cancel trips and all that. Because of the end of exams, there wasn't much going on for Princeton Athletics.

The men's volleyball team got out to Los Angeles to play UCLA and then at UC-San Diego before the snow started. The women's tennis team is at Grand Canyon tomorrow to start its week in Arizona.

The end of the exams and the end of the blizzard lead directly into a widely busy time for Princeton's team. There are events every day this week, though only one is at home, the men's hockey game tomorrow night at Baker Rink against AIC.

This coming weekend has a ton of huge events, and many of them are at home.

There's HYP swimming and diving for the men's and women's teams. The wrestling team is home three times, against F&M and then the Ivy opener at Dillon Gym Saturday and then against Rutgers at Jadwin Gym Sunday.

And of course there is basketball.

The men are on the road, at Brown Friday and Yale Saturday. Princeton is 1-0 in the league, after its OT win over Penn back on January 9.

The women play at home against those two teams. Princeton, winner of five of the last six Ivy titles, has been sitting on its 50-48 loss to Penn in its league opener.

To stay with the snowy theme, the avalanche of Princeton events through next weekend is just the start for the next few months around here. There are no events a week from today, but there are 34 more coming the weekend after that, including the Ivy fencing round-robins that will end with the first winter Ivy titles.

That's a crazy number.

Oh, and you know what doesn't count among those 34 events? The men's lacrosse scrimmage, which will be Feb. 6 against Monmouth.

The snow can't melt fast enough.