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The longest paper route
Today on my paper routes was hell. On a typical day, I can finish both routes in about an hour and fifteen minutes. Today, it took four hours.
Friday night, we were forecasted to get a "light dusting" of snow. We ended up with 3-4 inches. Saturday morning, the roads actually weren't too bad with the fresh powder. However, the sun came up during the day, half-melted everything, everything got packed down, and at night, it became an ice rink.
The first route wasn't too terrible. After fishtailing everywhere, Hubby and I parked at a school and split up the route to walk. It was only about four blocks and with my Super Sled power, I was able to slide on the downhill parts, which sped things up.
The second route is where things got interesting. Route 2 runs along the ridge of a hill. The route itself is fairly level, but getting up there is steep. Every path we came across was a giant ice slide. So we parked at the bottom of the hill and carried the papers up. 80 Sunday papers is no light feat. I carried a couple bundles in my arm while Hubs towed the sled, and halfway up we swapped.
Towards the end, we realized we were missing 20 papers. I didn't bother to count when we picked them up, so I don't know if it was the fault of the dropsite driver or if they fell off the sled somewhere (we were having a hell of a time keeping papers on the sled). I called it in, told dispatch we were on foot. They said they would send someone out. I told them I'd get to the closest major road to meet them.
Driver called and said he'd be there in ten. He called a few minutes later and said he was stuck. From what I can tell, he was using a GPS to direct himself to us, because while that particular road would normally be the fastest, it is also the steepest and tends to be the iciest. So we were standing around waiting for close to an hour. Smart move would have been to pass by the University (which is one route we didn't try since it's out of the way for us, but he would have been coming from that direction), but oh well. He got unstuck, then stuck again, then unstuck, and finally made it up to us. I hope that was the last of his troubles.
I finished my route around 8am. Deadline for Sundays is 6:30am. Fortunately, customers on my route have been understanding in poor road conditions in the past, so I don't expect more than a couple late paper complaints (one customer in particular I'm betting complained, but he's a dbag so I don't care).
When I got home and logged it all into my fitness tracker on SparkPeople ('cause after that, screw it, I'm not doing a workout on top of all that hiking), it said I'd exceeded my fitness goals for the week and complained that I needed to adjust my calorie intake if I was going to be more active. (My goal is 180 minutes, which is 30 min a day 6 days a week....I spent 270 min today hiking in the snow, since even while we were waiting I was jumping and moving around to keep warm). My pedometer had over 15,000 steps, when it normally has only 1,000 when I finish the route.
I is tired.
I better get good tips for this.
PS: Here's a pretty pic of the damn hill. It's steeper in person, trust me:
Friday night, we were forecasted to get a "light dusting" of snow. We ended up with 3-4 inches. Saturday morning, the roads actually weren't too bad with the fresh powder. However, the sun came up during the day, half-melted everything, everything got packed down, and at night, it became an ice rink.
The first route wasn't too terrible. After fishtailing everywhere, Hubby and I parked at a school and split up the route to walk. It was only about four blocks and with my Super Sled power, I was able to slide on the downhill parts, which sped things up.
The second route is where things got interesting. Route 2 runs along the ridge of a hill. The route itself is fairly level, but getting up there is steep. Every path we came across was a giant ice slide. So we parked at the bottom of the hill and carried the papers up. 80 Sunday papers is no light feat. I carried a couple bundles in my arm while Hubs towed the sled, and halfway up we swapped.
Towards the end, we realized we were missing 20 papers. I didn't bother to count when we picked them up, so I don't know if it was the fault of the dropsite driver or if they fell off the sled somewhere (we were having a hell of a time keeping papers on the sled). I called it in, told dispatch we were on foot. They said they would send someone out. I told them I'd get to the closest major road to meet them.
Driver called and said he'd be there in ten. He called a few minutes later and said he was stuck. From what I can tell, he was using a GPS to direct himself to us, because while that particular road would normally be the fastest, it is also the steepest and tends to be the iciest. So we were standing around waiting for close to an hour. Smart move would have been to pass by the University (which is one route we didn't try since it's out of the way for us, but he would have been coming from that direction), but oh well. He got unstuck, then stuck again, then unstuck, and finally made it up to us. I hope that was the last of his troubles.
I finished my route around 8am. Deadline for Sundays is 6:30am. Fortunately, customers on my route have been understanding in poor road conditions in the past, so I don't expect more than a couple late paper complaints (one customer in particular I'm betting complained, but he's a dbag so I don't care).
When I got home and logged it all into my fitness tracker on SparkPeople ('cause after that, screw it, I'm not doing a workout on top of all that hiking), it said I'd exceeded my fitness goals for the week and complained that I needed to adjust my calorie intake if I was going to be more active. (My goal is 180 minutes, which is 30 min a day 6 days a week....I spent 270 min today hiking in the snow, since even while we were waiting I was jumping and moving around to keep warm). My pedometer had over 15,000 steps, when it normally has only 1,000 when I finish the route.
I is tired.
I better get good tips for this.PS: Here's a pretty pic of the damn hill. It's steeper in person, trust me:
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