When the East Wind Blows

In a land of prevailing westerlies, what the east wind brings can be, well, interesting.

I'm always served notice. My wind chime is nestled in a recess on the east side of my house. That may seem odd, but a little of it is wonderful, more isn't. So I didn't put it on the west side. Tuesday night it not only was chiming, it was banging into the house, right along with the rain, right at the corner of my bedroom. Back when that was the garage, it wasn't so annoying. Now, having learned fairly well to tune out Daddy's nocturnal noises, it's again not so bad. But it served warning.

We had just finished melting all but the big piles of snow up here after a wonderful week in the 50s. Yesterday morning I looked out to snow over everything. It's amazing how much snow a furry-footed dog can track in and leave in puddles all over the floor with enough left over to soak into the carpeting all over, but I still didn't think too much of it until the TV announced that our local schools were closed. What? They never do that here! We're rugged pioneer stock, and besides, all the really big storms manage to miss us by going slightly around us, leaving us the dregs. Still plenty annoying, but nothing to close schools over.

Hmmm, maybe my morning glance out had missed something. Like the fact that it started as rain, and turning to snow meant it was heavier and slicker and more packed down than usual. It wound up taking me 25 minutes to clear the car of it before driving out, and even then it was a sloppy job. I started trying to shovel a narrow path to the car, just to keep my feet dry, but a half-shovel full was where it stopped pushing forward and needed to be dumped. That ended quickly. So the feet got wet, so what? There's already a hole in my right shoe. I'll have to replace them when the weather gets nicer. I already knew that.

We keep an old straw broom outside to clear car roofs and hoods. It didn't help much. The wiper blades, once reached, had to be pried up and ice knocked off - repeatedly - before they would shape to the windshield and actually be useful, and even that not until after the windshield ice was scraped away. I had to knock snow away from all the lights since it had packed itself around them thickly enough to completely prevent any light or signal from getting through. Some of the ice I left there, reasoning that it would wind up falling off on its own through wind, vibration, heat and salt spray.

When gassing up that morning, I commented about the school closings and was informed that the buses couldn't get in. OK, I'm out in this crap in a dinky hatchback when the buses can't get around? Somebody give me my gold star now.

But the roads weren't bad. The plows had been out, so as long as you didn't mind traveling 30 mph over packed snow/ice, and stayed away from the idiots who did, it wasn't too bad. Right away I was sent a run where the pick was way up I94, partway between St. Cloud and Alexandria, ready at 1PM. I texted dispatch to ask whether, considering the roads, I shouldn't just go straight there instead of waiting for work along the way. For a change, he agreed.

It would normally be about a two hour trek, or just over that from the northeastern metro. It took over four. Once I finally reached 94 heading west out of the western metro, there was one clear lane all the way up. Of course, clear is relative. It was still packed snow/ice, but it had been plowed. Occasionally somebody had dropped salt as well, often just enough to tempt you to speeding up so you were going about 15 mph too fast when you fit the snow/ice again. After a while I stopped seeing the cars off in the ditch/snowbanks whose drivers had fallen for it. Of course, mostly you couldn't get up enough speed to do anything but wreck the undercarriage of your car if you did lose control. Lucky them.

My most amusing sighting was of three snowplows on northbound 169 when I was on southbound through Brooklyn Park. The first plow was in the median, lots of black mud dug up around it. The second was behind it with a big chain, trying to pull it out. The third was blocking all traffic so they'd have room to work. Apparently the cops were busy elsewhere. Behind them there were at least two miles' worth of stopped cars.

What, I'm out in a hatchback when even the plows are going off the roads? Somebody give me a gold star now!

I kept driving.

I also took a few stops on the way up, mostly due to coffee, either its abundance or lack. We're slowly weaning Daddy off caffeine in hopes he'll sleep better at night, but that means I'm being weaned off at home as well. Yesterday was not the day for that. Highway hypnosis is bad enough on long trips under normal circumstances. It's worse when you have to focus all your attention on staying in - well, actually, finding - your lane for four hours. Bless my polarized sunglasses! They're great for putting definition into layers of white. But I still need breaks, and not just to stay awake. White-knuckling it with one broken hand and one that's been over-compensating and has been suffering muscle strain for a couple weeks now is enough of a reason on its own.

That east wind was still blowing, even while the snow finally started letting up. On overpasses, it managed to push snow up and over guardrails, to dump in drifts on the shoulder and spill out into the right lane, leaving it even narrower than what it had already been. I managed to stay in it, not even tempted to swerve over into the left lane, which was still by far the worse one. Either they only plowed the right lane, or only plowed it recently, or traffic stayed in it enough to keep it fairly clear relative to the other. It seemed like oncoming traffic, divided as those lanes were from mine, still had much clearer lanes than the westbound side. Maybe it was a grass-is-greener phenomenon, lent credence by greater distance.

At least I wasn't heading much farther than I did. As it was, I passed two warning signs perched alongside the road warning traffic that 94 was closed at Fargo. Didn't need that.

Finally I reached my destination, took a few minutes for a break as I was early, grabbed my package and headed back. That grass-is-greener thing? The eastbound lanes were much better the whole way back. There were still intermittent icy patches, just enough to resist the urge to go 70 mph, but what took four hours going up took two hours coming back. And yes, the westbound lanes looked worse from the other side. It wasn't just optical delusions. It was actual bad plowing and worse salting.

Back in the metro it turned into pretty much a normal winter day, slick ramps and parking lots, main streets mostly clear. On the way home I heard the radio weather guy give snow totals for Osceola, 7 miles away from home, as 11 & 1/2", the highest of those he read off. Whoopie. But it gave me an idea. I'd swing by the river over there and see if there were any good winter pictures to take.

The previous weekend I'd taken Daddy out in the car to see how the snow was all going away. (Get the clear ground while you can, folks.) We'd stopped at the boat landing under the bridge and I'd taken pics of the bridge and ice chunks passing underneath it. Wouldn't that be cool with 11 & 1/2" snow on them as they floated by? Yeah, well, dream on. The ice had melted and the snow had no river perches. It did, however, create other interesting effects, and I did get a few pics before heading home.

Speaking of, remember how I used to never have a camera when I was out and about for work and that's when all those wonderful things appeared just demanding to be preserved? Well, that's changed. Now I always do, as long as I carry my work Nextel with me. The old one finally refused to input data properly on the screen so I could tell what to pick and drop and where, so it got replaced.

Upgraded, even, by a Nextel that also happens to be a Blackberry. A Blackberry! I now have a Blackberry! Yes, I still hate having to learn new technology, but once you know the new system, it's the same screen worth of data, only now you can see nearly all of it at one pop instead of scrolling and scrolling and scrolling. And it's a qwerty keyboard. No more hitting a number pad key just the perfect number of times to produce the letter you want and heaven help you if you ever want to find where they hid the punctuation. Now it's all on display, right there, easily accessible if you maintain a pair of fingernails to hit the keys with so you don't suffer from fat fingers multi-strokes. Of course, it needs two hands to operate, so you MUST pull over to use it instead of driving, and I can't tell you how many times I've pulled halfway out of a parking space and had to pull back in and put it in park so I could read whatever dispatch just sent this time!

But it's a blackberry. And it has a camera. And it has a charger.

That's all.

No phone, no internet (I'm told they're disabled. Maybe a hacker can tell me otherwise. Who knows?) No connecting cables to connect it to my computer. (Target says I need one with a USB connector on one end, and a mini USB on the other, $12.50 please.) It also comes with NO OPERATING MANUAL! (I suspect they think if they include one, we'll learn how to actually use it.)

Of course, what you need in those circumstances is a kid. Lucky me, I had one. I picked up my granddaughter, took her to the Taco Bell (her choice), handed her the Blackberry, and said, "How does this camera work?" She, having never seen one before, took the better part of a minute to figure it out. And one more to show me. Next day I figured out the mouse zoom feature on my own, kinda accidentally. Three positions. Cool! So I carry a camera around with me all the time now. : ) : ) : )