Driving in Winter….

One thing I’ve always taken pride in was my ability to drive on bad snow and ice covered roads.  During my formative driving years, I worked at a local mall, and would go in early to buff floors before the store opened at 10:00. I would arrive usually before Mall Security opened the doors, and would just wait in my car until I saw them unlock the door at about 8:00am.  During the winter, I still went in because 99% of the time the mall did not close, and people were a little more thick skinned about getting to work. Two hour delays were made so that the people could get to work without endangering the kids waiting on the corner for the bus, and endanger the bus while attempting to drive to work… now it seems that two hour delays, and cancellation comes when the first snowflake falls… (But more on that later)

Seeing that I was at a LARGE parking lot in a car with rear wheel drive, I took it upon myself to have a little fun in the lot, and do DONUTS!  (mostly to see how a car worked in the snow, but also for fun)  I would do this until either the door was unlocked, or Mall Security came by and said “The door’s unlocked”!  So I’d park and go do my floors which were usually waste those days because of the crap that people dragged in on their shoes…but hey…it was a job! ($3.35 an hour baby!)  Then after my day, I’d drive home in the slop that was there, and do the shoveling. (well unless my mom got bored and went out and did it)

As the years rolled on, those years in the lot helped my driving ability, and I pretty much can drive in anything.  Although ice still presents a challenge since there is just NO WAY to really stop in it. Inertia takes first hand precedence on it.  Thankfully my first “test” of ice came on a lonely road with no other cars, in my 1976 Plymouth Volare` that actually had bumpers!   Cars need bumpers!   In this day and age with the way people drive, a slight bump is a costly thing!   A few years back when I had a Nissan Maxima (loved that car, but I out grew it with my hobbies) and I pulled out of a parking spot and bumped into a low trailer (that I didn’t see) and punctured my bumper guard.  Well that was a $1,500.00 venture with my insurance company! If I had an actual bumper, that would have been avoided!

Anyway…back to driving in the snow… Last weekend I spent driving in snow to take my wife to see my niece play field hockey in Lancaster…then in between games, my wife figured that it would be a good idea to come BACK to Hershey to go to church, then go down for her next game.  BAD IDEA!  The roads were bad, and it took twice as long for me to get there and back…the problem is that people driving in the bad weather RIDE THEIR BRAKES!  That’s a HUGE no-no in this kind of crud!   If you need to SLOW DOWN just take your foot off the pedal, and don’t tailgate…if the person in front of you is slowing down, just take your foot off the gas!  Simple enough!   People just can’t drive in this, and panic at the first sign of a brake light!   Lisa was getting mad at me because I was passing… I was just trying to avoid a rear end collision.

As far as how the schools are dealing with this these days… I remember way back hardly ever having a snow day. Two hour delays were fairly common, mainly because the schools wanted to give the teachers a time to drive to the school, the regular working people in the world time to get to work, so that they weren’t going to interfere with the busses with the kids on them. Fair enough!   We had a bus driver that lived up the street from me, Mrs. Billy!   I was riding her bus long before I was even going to school, when she’d drop off my brother at the corner, she’d ask if I wanted to go for a ride the rest of her trip around our neighborhood, before she’d drop me back off at my house.  Nice lady GREAT bus driver, and one that I’d trust anyone under her care!   All through grade school she drove me, rain snow, sleet, ice, etc.  No problems!  When it came time for me to start going to high school, the “schedule” came out and I was assigned to another bus. (The “freshman/sophomore” bus)  the lady driving the bus wasn’t as experienced as Mrs. Billy, in fact, I think she was just trained, and this was her first year.  During the first snow storm, I got onto her bus, and as we rounded the corner at the end of my street, there was a little skid…ok, whatever… then we started up Fulling Mill Road, which had a nice set of hills to climb.  We got about half way up and the bus wouldn’t go any further.  The rest of the kids on the bus were freaking out, and some of us that were more overzealous were giving her a lot of crap!  We finally DID make it to school, but that night a lot of us complained to our parents.  My mother just said “I’ll call the school tomorrow and tell them you’re riding Mrs. Billy’s bus, no exceptions!”  So she did, and I started riding with Mrs. Billy again…and had NO issues!   Back then you REALLY had to have a “state of emergency” before getting an entire day off because of the snow!

Fast forward to the 2000’s, when you’d think that the technology, training, and equipment are better, and you get to see on a regular basis that these schools are quick on the draw to pull the plug…I guess too many people are threatening liability, but hey, the kids suffer because they have 180 days to go, and if they get too many off, their year is extended.  Oh well, what can ya do!  I don’t have to deal with that!