The one thing I remember during Welcome Weekend was the Resident Assistants telling us that we will likely never experience a snow day. I was bummed because, coming from a small town in Northwest Iowa, I had had multiple snow days, early dismissals or two-hour late starts each year I forgot that colleges would be less likely to cancel class than high schools. However, after the horrendous winter weather Iowa has been experiencing, I have found myself on two different occasions waking up to have my roommate tell me that classes have, indeed, been cancelled. Best days of my life? Definitely.

The recent ice storm came just one day into the semester, so hardly any of us had a lot of homework and we soon became bored (that is, after we had already taken two naps, watched a movie, Facebook stalked, etc.). As I made my daily walk across the hall to “The Triple,” our boredom slowly became intolerable. My friends and I don’t normally find ourselves bored, so this was quite a weird feeling sitting in “The Triple,” occasionally looking up from Cosmo, the computer or the TV and staring at each other, wondering what we should do next.

I must admit that my friends and I may be considered strange if you walk by us or happen to sit at a table close to us in one of the dining halls. We are constantly laughing, making strange noises—well, really that’s only Katelyn—or bursting out in song with our wonderful voices. This day was no different. As usual, whenever I’m bored, I spend my time reading “Texts From Last Night” or “My Life Is Average.” I came across this text: “Dude, I’m listening to ‘I Believe I Can Fly,’ I’m high and driving. This is so amazing.” Suddenly Katelyn starts belting out, “I Believe I Can Fly,” like she’s part of a gospel choir. I join in with “Uh-huhs” and “Go girls!” like I’m getting paid for it.

Soon after, Kate decided she’d had enough of our American Idol reject singing and continued watching a subpar show on TV. Obviously, she was just jealous. After we had been so rudely informed that our singing wasn’t top notch, Katelyn and I had an epic stare down from across the room and decided that the only logical solution to our boredom would be a trip over to McDonald’s for a delicious Reese’s McFlurry. And that’s when the adventure began.

You’d think that walking from Crawford to McDonald’s would only take about three minutes, including waiting for the “walk” sign. This journey, however, was going to be much longer. We knew the sidewalk would be icy, since we had ventured out to have lunch at Olmsted earlier that afternoon, but we somehow thought going uphill would be less icy. As we approached the halfway point of walking up the steep sidewalk to get to the stoplight, Katelyn brilliantly pointed out that it would be terrible if someone slipped because they would fall all the way to the bottom

At the time, I didn’t realize she was foreshadowing my near-death experience. Needless to say, a few steps later, my shoes lost traction and I slowly began sliding down the sidewalk all hunched over from laughing so hard. I looked up to see Katelyn standing perfectly still on the ice, dying from laughter. A good 10 to 15 feet later, I finally stopped sliding. I then began my climb again, but I walked partway in the snow for fear that I wouldn’t be able to stop next time I slipped. After about 10 minutes, we eventually made it to our destination: McDonald’s. Never have I been so happy to step onto a tiled floor.

And so, my friends, that was my epic adventure of the Ice Day. Please be careful next time there’s freezing rain—I don’t want to look out my window and see one of you sliding all the way down the sidewalk when I sufficiently warned you about the consequences.

Until next time…

Mataloni is a sophomore news/internet and music major and can be contacted at rebecca.mataloni@drake.edu.