Stop the world, I want to reflect. (The Last Laugh).

Last month I congratulated myself for being strategic. I had arranged to spend 48 hours in Washington DC attending a gathering of state coordinators for the Office of Women in Higher Education (OWHE), a part of the national American Council on Education, preceding the 85th annual ACE conference.

I'd fly in Friday, meet up with Claire Van Ummersen and attend the OWHE meeting, maybe sit in on a few sessions of the conference of National Association of Presidential Assistants in Higher Education, and the few relevant ACE sessions.

The plan was to invest just 48 hours at our nation's capital, meet a lot of friends and colleagues, gather information for several articles and high-tail it back to Wisconsin on Sunday to finish the March issue.

All went according to plan--until it snowed. And snowed some more. Known as the President's Day Snowstorm, it dumped about two feet of the cold, white stuff on the capital, closing airports and just about everything else until Tuesday. (Back in Wisconsin these days, snow is scarce. The snowshoes I bought two years ago have not yet come out of the package.)

The reality

Advised to expect the capital's worst snowstorm since the 1920s with up to 30 inches, those of us already at the conference bonded as though fated to be together.

We laughed that whoever wasn't here by then wouldn't be coming. That included Mary Sue Coleman, president of the University of Michigan, who planned to give a plenary luncheon speech about why Michigan is taking its court cases on race-conscious admissions all the way to the Supreme Count. Unable to penetrate DC's blizzard, she addressed the ACE group by satellite.