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Sunday, Jan. 09, 2005 - 7:45 p.m. It did end up snowing Friday night, even though I told you I though it was going to miss us here in Mohall. �My bad�, as Randy �moon the crowd in Green Bay today� Moss might say. I managed to stay awake almost all night. Almost, because I finally had to pull over for a short (15 minute) nap about 4 am. If I hadn�t, I would have ended up in the ditch or driving over the hood of another motorist�s vehicle. Let me remind y�all one more time- 12 hour shift, not given any breaks or a lunch period. 12 straight hours, from 7 pm to 7 am. If you can begrudge me for taking a 15 minute nap at 4 am, good for you. I�d rather not kill an innocent victim� How did the night go? Glad you asked. Not well. I managed to keep the road as safe as possible, considering the situation. Heavy snow fell around 9 pm. Since this was on a Friday night, that meant 2 complications- high school basketball games, and end-of-week partiers, leaving bars all night long. I spread 3 loads of salt over my route from between 7:30 pm and 1 am. This kept the pavement mostly slushy over this time span. That didn�t stop the inexperienced high school drivers from ending up in my ditches at various points along the route (5 total) from between 9 pm and 10:30 pm. Nobody was injured (besides their pride), and no vehicle was damaged that I could see. Just a bunch of �driving too fast and spun out of controls�. Add to that the 2 (most likely) drunk drivers that ended up in the ditches after 1 am, and you could call it a successful evening of snow fighting. Except for� The fact I caught my plow blade in the expansion crack of one of my bridges (driving about 30 mph), causing somewhat major damage to my snowplow. I have driven over this bridge with the plow down and facing that same direction at least 100 times over the past 6 years (that�s when was asked to take over this busy route). Never once have I came close to sticking the edge in the groove. Until Friday, about 3 am, that is. Everything in the storage area above the drivers seat fell down upon me at high velocity when this happened. Oh yeah- and the main support beam for the plow broke in two pieces. This wasn�t even discovered by yours truly until 4 am, when I was in the storage fueling up. I�m talking about a 4� hollow square piece of �� thick steel, neatly sheared in two pieces. This wasn�t enough damage to park my truck, so I headed back to my route. I knew that the repair needed for this break would have to be done by a local welding shop (my estimate right now? Around $250 for the complete repair), so I showed it to Pumpkinhead, and then returned to duty. I managed to get the rest of the snow removed from my driving lanes, and set about cleaning out my turn lanes. That�s when my second breakdown occurred. As my plow caught the dirt at the end of one turn lane, the plow tripped. This is what it is supposed to do- instead of breaking some mounting bracket or support steel, a spring trips and causes the plow to fall forward. All you have to do to reset the plow is lift it back up. The spring pulls the blade back to an upright position, good as new. Except for one thing- this time, when my plow tripped (and because my main brace support was now in two pieces), it twisted a little too far to the right. When this happened, one of my hydraulic hoses was stretched beyond its limits, causing it to rupture. Hot hydraulic oil, all over the hood and the windshield of my truck. This was around 5 am. No sense in returning to the yard at that point. All I would be able to do now was park the truck and try to scrounge up another one to finish out my shift. Which I didn�t want to do, since we would be going home in less than two hours. So� I just spent the rest of my shift spreading what was left of my salt on all the areas that had started to refreeze (which was a lot of my 4 lane, north of town). Am I happy with how the evening went? Not really. Happy that I did what I could to keep the roads safe. Happy to pick up the 18 hours of overtime pay (which should come in handy helping pay for Codeman�s college tuition next fall) But quite unhappy with the damages to my snowplow. Oh well: I made a bunch of guys happy when I tore things up. That has to be good for something, right? BTW- the last time I tore up a snowplow this badly was in 1983. And I managed to do welding-repair worthy damage to two different plows on the same shift that day (December 27th, 1983. My boss at the time said �Well, it�s been nice working with you�, making me think I would be fired the next day for my actions. Dickhead, he was). Considering I had only worked for the NDDOT for 3 weeks when that happened, I guess that can�t be held against me. The fact that I went 21 years without doing anything like this again should go in my favor tomorrow, once Beavis sees the damage. Don�t mean they won�t try to make me fill out an incident (or worse, accident) report tomorrow morning. The new administration seems to be big on casting blame for anything that goes wrong. Even if what happens is just part of doing the best job you can do. I�ll let you know what happens tomorrow�.
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