Snow was a hassle last week

The excitement never ends around here. Last week with all of the snow, the duty fell on me to drive the mail bags to the post offices in the northern part of the county. I debated about taking the van or my car. The van is rear-wheel drive and the car front-wheel, but much lower to the ground. I?ll get to that later.

So about 1:30 p.m. I headed to Durham into the teeth of the storm. The paper has to get out, right? About 15 minutes later I roll into Durham, where it appeared to have snowed more than in Hillsboro. The guys at the gas station on the highway said if they were me they would head back to town rather than attempt to drive to Tampa, Ramona and Burdick.

I thought I would give it a go, and headed east on the Durham-Lincolnville road. It didn?t appear that it had been plowed yet, or it had snowed a bunch since it was plowed. It seemed to keep getting deeper, but I was at the point of no return. If I stopped I knew I would be stuck, so onward I drove. My best chance was to head down the middle of the road as no one else was out there.

By the time I got to the Tampa road my knuckles were as white as the snow outside, but north I headed with the snow getting even deeper, and now the snow was flying over the top of the car. Couldn?t stop.

I was relieved when I slid into Tampa and dropped the usual five papers at Agri-Producers.

Now I had a dilemma. How would I get back home?

Luckily, Nathan Barney was standing there and offered to break the drifts on 330th to Kansas Highway 15 with his pickup. So I followed him and got back to the highway?where I promptly got stuck in the deep snow trying to turn onto K-15. Nathan gave me a push or two and I was headed home.

?

When I got back to the office, I called everyone down the line to tell them I wouldn?t be there on Tuesday because of the snow. The word was that the county plows wouldn?t be back out until 7 a.m. Wednesday, so I headed back out mid-morning.

After driving for about three miles on U.S. Highway 56 east from Hillsboro, I finally got up to about 40 mph and noticed a terrible shimmy in the front of the car. I assumed it must be ice in the spokes of the front wheels from the wild ride the day before.

Since it was so cold I really didn?t want to get out and check and thought that maybe the rumble strips at the junction of 56 and 77 would knock it out. No such luck.

So I took my ice scraper handle and poked out a lot of ice in the wheel spokes and the shimmy went away.

This time there was some drifting snow, but nothing to keep me from my destinations. So if you live in Tampa, Ramona or Burdick, this is why your papers were late this past week.

I took a granola bar and a blanket along just in case.

If you wish to share your comments or ideas, my e-mail address is joel@
hillsborofreepress.com.

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