Saturday, March 08, 2008

3.8 Trucks in the snow

I had a truck making a delivery this morning. We'd had about six inches of snow come down since last evening. I think I have mentioned before that the plows tend to avoid our little spur? Things have improved somewhat since then, but only somewhat.

Even the main part of the loop had not been recently plowed when the truck showed up this morning. The driver is apparently not terribly versed in manhandling his vehicle in the snow. His reaction to spinning tires was (repeatedly) to step harder on the gas (this will obviously improve traction, right?). He danced his truck sideways and mashed my neighbor's mailbox flat. He then finished turning around so that he could approach my driveway backing up, and spun his tires some more for a while, before deciding that our street was obviously quiet enough that he could sit crosswise of it until they finished their delivery.

This would probably have been fine, except that just as they got all setup to do the delivery thing, the plow showed up to do our spur. Seeing a big truck in his way, the plow (one of the smaller variety) did his best, clearing out the bottom portion of the spur and carefully piling it all just at the nose of the truck. J observed all this from his vantage point of commiserating with the neighbor over his mashed mailbox, and came to get the shovel to move the stack-o-snow out of the truck's way.

The driver and helper unloaded, got my signature on the papers, and piled back into the truck. The driver started the engine, put it in gear, and promptly buried the nose of the truck in the pile of snow J had just moved out of his way. (It took true talent, trust me.) After a few more minutes of backing (more spinning tires) and filling (still more spinning tires) he finally got it straightened out and bucked on down the street.

The helper's last words to me? "It's going to be a long day".

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