Thursday, February 2, 2023

The Best Job In The World. And I'm NOT Talking About Mail Carrier!

They did it again! Those TV meteorologists were on the wrong side of 50-50 once more. What a good job to have, never being held accountable! I used to get so mad at them when I was teaching, for hyping me the kids up for a snow day, and then having NOTHING appear on the predicted day. More than once I stayed up all night enjoying my free time, only to discover that I had to get ready to go to work! Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, and you'll keep fooling me forever and ever!

Anyhoo... all the hullaballoo about last week's snowstorm, making us change our Oklahoma casino reservations, only to have the snow show up later than predicted. Sure, it was 8 inches here. But it was fluffy and melted the next day. We could have made it to Oklahoma before hitting that weather. This time, there was nothing mentioned about a storm. Just a passing reference to a winter storm watch. Then VOILA! Sleet coating the roads overnight! Many traffic accidents in the city. All the local schools called off classes. 

Farmer H started seeing stuff on Facebook about the roads on Sunday evening. He sent The Pony a text to put up his windshield wipers in case we got ice. No need to have them freeze and break, like the one on his back hatch last time.

Anyhoo... I sent him a text around 6:00 a.m. to warn him about the roads and the wind chill. It's the least I can do with my helicopter grounded.

"All the schools closed for ice. Be careful. Wind chill in teens."

"I know. Layers on layers today."

"Yes. Be safe. Don't go on uncleared steps! Where are you working?"

"Don't know. Mondays aren't consistent."

"Okay. Looks like weather moved on, another round coming about 3:00 THEY SAY."

"Yeah. But it's not getting over freezing today."

"Chemicals might start working."

"Car's defrosting. It's a solid coating on the roads. Guess I should have backed in when I flipped the wipers up."

"Yeah. They missed the forecast with this one. Be careful. Take it slow."

"Had the defroster started as soon as I got out of the shower. My windshields should be fine. Since it's just a short drive I'll keep my windows down so I can see the mirrors."

"Windows might not go down with ice on them! Don't burn up a window motor!"

"All cleared. Going in."

An hour and a half later, I heard more.

"No actual letter mail came in today. Some people are doing the hand-cased stuff. But I'm just gonna do two routes of packages and call it early, I think. Highways are fine according to the manager. It's the backroads that aren't."


"Looks like you're in an LLV (Long Life Vehicle) today. I can tell by the filth!"

"Yeah. I'm being careful. No sliding in this, but I slid at the bottom of my street and the railroad tracks stop sign in my car."

"Only thing you can do on ice is go slow so you don't have to jam on the brakes."

"Yeah."

The Pony got home around 2:30. He had the next day off as regularly scheduled. So that helped.

2 comments:

River said...

I'm glad The Pony plays it safe when driving in such awful weather. I see too many pile-ups on the interstate highways on our news here.

Hillbilly Mom said...

River,
Ice is nothing to toy with!