During the ice storm Loren and I wait over an hour for a table at the rickety thirty-story hotel. When the music is almost over we are led up the stairs to an elevator which opens on a tiny balcony with a table for two which opens on a musty twenty-nine-story atrium. The food never comes, and when it does there is only bacon and potatoes, no eggs. So I strike out into the storm with a mechanized sled that has a weedwacker attachment to smooth down the ice in front. At the coast I ditch it for a sort of waterbound snowboard which, as a favor to the owner, I ride along the frigid coast to the depository. No choice but to walk back.