Happy Groundhog Day! Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow today, just like last year, and the year before that, and the year before that. Three years ago today, Karianne and I were in Punxsutawney, PA for Groundhog Day, and it was a ridiculous adventure.
Punxsutawney is a pretty small town (around 6,000 residents), but around 25,000 obnoxious tourists swarm over it every February 2, and in 2003, we were among them! Now, since so many people come, if you want to see the most famous rodent meteorologist in the world, well, you have to get up pretty early in the morning. We spent the night in Clarion, PA and got up at 3 a.m. to drive into Punxsutawney. This is what we look like at that time of day:
(Only one of us is a morning person.)
We bundled up, left the hotel, and arrived in Punxsutawney around 5:00. To handle the crowds, they have you park in grocery store parking lots, and then they bus you in to Gobbler’s Knob, the site of Phil’s yearly prognostication (this whole thing has a very weird vocabulary associated with it).
On the bus, we sat right in front of a group of about 8 college students. Freshmen, if I may venture a guess. They were SO excited to be there, and they were saying so very loudly, with voices that cracked on every syllable. “I can’t belieeeeeeve we’re in Punxsutaaaaaawnnney!” They went to Penn State and had decided at about midnight to drive in for Groundhog Day. This made us (who had made hotel reservations, packed carefully, etc.) feel old.
When we first arrived at Gobbler’s Knob we got a very good spot not too far from the stage. However, there were, um, odors. Basically we were surrounded by “young-uns,” and the smells of smoke, alcohol, and possibly some rather intense B.O. were pretty overpowering. We looked around for a better place to stand, and far off, on the other side of the crowd, a sign shone like a beacon in the darkness: “Family Section.”
“You want to go over to the Family Section?” I asked Karianne. She did. So we carefully navigated through the crowd until we reached the sign. There we stopped for a moment.
“Honey, you realize that once we cross over into the Family Section, we can never come back, right?” I asked. “We’ll be in the Family Section for the rest of our lives. Are you sure you’re ready for this?”
“Let’s go,” she said. And on that day, we crossed over.
So, again, we felt kind of old. For the record, the Family Section was not altogether odor-free, either. The (~50 year old) guy in front of us was drinking what I suspect was wine stored in a grape juice container, and he was pretty loud, too.
Now, you might think that with 25,000 people coming into town to stand for two-and-a-half hours in sub-30-degree temperatures, there would be something to do. And you’d be right: you could watch high school kids dance. Seriously, the town of Punxsutawney spared no cost to see that these thousands of out-of-towners would be entertained. They set up a sound system, played some pop music, and got high school kids to come up on the stage and dance awkwardly. For two-and-a-half hours. Here’s what it looked like from the Family Section:
At 7:25, a lot of groundhog officials come out in fancy outfits:
They have titles like “Fog Spinner,” “Storm Chaser,” “Burrow Master,” and “Head Hailmaker.” They wield their power over nature like a mighty fist to crush those that oppose them, yet they handle their gentle groundhog leader with tenderness and respect. Or maybe they’re just big nerds.
Anyway, after awhile, they bring out Phil, put him on a stump, and look to see if he sees his shadow. To me it looked like he just stood there, but they said he saw his shadow. Seemed like a scam — I think Phil is just a puppet leader for the weather regime which will soon be overthrown by insurgent hamsters. Long live the hampsters! Sic Semper Groundhogus!
Um… sorry, forget I said that. Moving on: After Phil saw his shadow, we waited around to be bused back to our car, which took about another hour — we were some of the last people to get on a bus. It was miserably cold, our feet were frozen, and we had been up since 3. But we were happy:
We slept in the car for an hour or so, then spent most of the day touring Punxsutawney. Here’s a goofy picture someone took for us in the Weather Museum there:
Notice that I don’t know how to stand behind a wooden cutout — I’m holding on to my own arm! What a dork.
There was a pretty cool (pun intended) ice sculpture in the town square:
Here’s a pic from Feb. 1, when we came into town briefly to scope things out. Punxsutawney is the “Weather Capital of the World.” So if you have a complaint about the weather, write the Congressman from Punxsutawney. I’m pretty sure that’s how that works.
Twice already I’ve mentioned how this whole thing made us feel old. We use to be the loud annoying kids who thought every single thing in the world was hilarious, but now we were the crotchety old adults being annoyed by those kids. Well, it got worse.
There’s a Christian parody band called Apologetix that we really like. They were playing in Punxsutawney that day at a skating rink, so we decided to go. It was a fun show…
…but it was all junior high kids and their parents. There was nobody there our age, except maybe the band. Once again we felt like our youth was past and we might as well hit the early-bird-special at Luby’s and try to get home before dark.
There’s an Apologetix song that really helped me that weekend, though. On our drive back to Pittsburgh, we listened to “How You Rewind Me” (a parody of “How You Remind Me” by Nickleback), which contains these lyrics:
And I’ve been wrong; I’ve been down
But through the problems and every battle
These five words in my head scream “But He isn’t done yet”
That was really encouraging. Sometimes I just feel like my best days are behind me, or my relationship with God will never get back on track. But He isn’t done yet with me, or with you! He still has plans for you, to give you hope and a future.
Well, that concludes the story of our trip to Punxsutawney. Have a great Groundhog Day!