First thing Wednesday morning, Daniel Petrie and his girlfriend, Emily Thayer, were digging their car out of its parking place on Massachusetts Avenue. It was rough going. Their tools were a broom and a scraper.

There was no place they had to be. IUPUI, where Petrie is a law student, and Indianapolis Public Schools, where Thayer is a teacher's aide, canceled classes.

But after calling the city, they said they were told the parking meters would be enforced regardless of the snow, and so to avoid having to feed the meter or getting a parking ticket, the young couple freed their vehicle and found another place for it nearby.

Rules are rules.

However, said city prosecutor Teri Kendrick, if your car gets ticketed after being snowed in at a parking meter, you can contact the city and plead your case.

Absentee rates appeared high Wednesday morning at businesses Downtown, and those who did make the trek traded war stories with co-workers about their commutes.

"It stunk," said Maureen Schoch, a loan operations manager at National Bank of Indianapolis. "I couldn't even get out."

Schoch had made a herculean effort to reach her job, however.

"I got two cars stuck," said Schoch, 48, Wanamaker. "First, I got my Mini Cooper stuck, and I made my husband push it back to the garage. Then I got our Eclipse stuck, and I made him push that one back to the garage. Finally, he just brought me to work in his Jeep Cherokee."

Once she and her husband made it out of their neighborhood, she said, the going got a little easier.

"(Traffic) was slow but moving," Schoch said. "Most people know just to take it slow. You have the idiots who continue to try to pass you and crowd you and make their own lane in the snow, but most people know to take it slow."

A cellist with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra walked the three miles Downtown from his home in Woodruff Place only to learn the orchestra's morning practice session had been canceled.

"At least I wasn't carrying a cello," said Robert Sansone, 69. "I keep one down here and several at home."

As Mayor Greg Ballard was advising residents to "stay home and stay safe" at a hastily called news conference Wednesday morning, Joan Powell was home and safe, and marveling at Indianapolis in winter.

Powell, a 64-year-old retired Montessori teacher, moved here last year from Manitowoc, Wis., near Green Bay. There, she got used to big winters, the snow coming in December and staying into March.

It didn't stop her, not the way it stops us. Wednesday, she had two events canceled because of the snow: a hair appointment and a Bible study class. Her daughter's classes at the Art Institute of Indianapolis were canceled. "Amazing," she said. "Indianapolis pretty much closes down."

When she was getting her real estate license a few years ago, Powell recalled, she drove 35 miles in a blizzard to attend class at a community college.

She'd have driven Wednesday, she said, had there been anywhere to go.

---- Bill McCleery, Will Higgins