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Old Feb 24, 2008 | 12:39 PM
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BootCamp
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Default RE: I hate winter weather!

I'm in Upstate NY. In addition to the usual west-to-east movement of systems/snowfall, we get Nor'easters, and continuous "lake effect snow" from the Great Lakes - Ontario in particular.

My job has me working on the roads - literally - all year long. I supervise highway construction, maintenance and repairs. My crews and I are in the sweltering heat all summer and freezing our peaches off all winter. We're on pavers as soon as we can get blacktop from the plants in April right through December. Nothing as nice as standing on a BlawKnox screed that's 140 degrees (standing over 280 degree blacktop right under your feet) on a nice 95 degree summer day with high humidity ..... except maybe putting up guiderail (that someone took down with a semi) on the wide-open interstates when the wind is howling at 35-40 mph and the temp struggles to get out of the teens......if we're not plowing snow, that is.
We work on shifts from 4:30 am to 1:00 pm every day - unless it's snowing. Then we're in the machines by 1:00 am until 1:00 pm - when the other shift comes in. Whether we get two feet of snow, or a dusting, we're logging a lot of miles and working a lot of hours. In a normal winter, we'll log about 300 hours of overtime between November 15th and April 15th. That's seven and a half weeks of time tacked onto the 15 weeks of regular time (I should note Nov 15 - Apr 15 is more like 20 weeks. We're on shifts for 15 weeks during that time). Our wives are "winter widows". The best part is after our shift, we get to come home and clear OUR driveways, just to go back in and do it all over again the next night. Every shift that I work when we're dealing with snow, I'm running a front end loader for 12 hour stretches, loading salt into the trucks/plows my men operate, or I'm training FNG's. We run a "One Person Plowing" operation, so the driver runs ALL of the controls alone - salt hopper/spreader, nose plow, and two wing plows. With all of the iron on the ground, the plows are 18 feet wide and 24-28 feet long. It takes a special breed of maniac such as us to get out of bed at 11:30 at night, clean off our cars, drive through the worst road conditions to get to work - to clean the roads for an ungrateful public. If we don't get to work and do our jobs, NO ONE gets to work.

Rare is the year when I'm NOT working on Christmas and New Year's Day.
Winters are bittersweet for us. We make a decent amount of money with all of the overtime, but we get tired (and sick from being run down) a lot. We hope for good amounts of snow (gets us our overtime), but temperatures that stay above zero most of the winter. That saves us from frostbite and high(er) heating costs.
This winter HAS been a series of nuisance storms, with very few "substantial snowfalls". BUT keep in mind my terms are relative. Substantial to some would be four inches of the white stuff. To us, it's two feet.
This year seems to be an "ice year" - more ice/freezing rain storms than snow storms. I'd rather drive in the snow.
SO when you say you're tired of the winter and ready for it to end, I hear ya, guys. I am too. But I'm not looking forward to paving on the hot and sticky summer days either.

Keep telling myself: I CAN retire in 8 more years....just 8 more years....there's no place like home.... no place like home.....

BTW - the PT Cruiser is VERY good in the snow with all-season tires and no chains.
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