The Adventures of Getting To Work

So did anyone mention lately how crazy the weather has been around here? We have had an early onslaught of winter that is one big adventure for some of us and a, er, pain in the butt for others. Winter weather here in Idaho always has its ups and downs--the ups being cancelled school (especially nice when you're a teacher or student, but I'm not sure how some working parents feel about it!), awesomely great times playing in the snow (skiing, snowboarding, tubing, night-tubing--that's a whole other story there!), the beauty of the snow-covered fields and trees...The downs, of course, being wind, wind, and...more wind. The thing about southern Idaho is, we can sometimes have amazingly wonderful snow storms that dump lots of the beautiful white stuff all around, making for a glisteny, sparkly winter wonderland. Unfortunately, the other thing about southern Idaho is the aforementioned WIND that is always close behind the peaceful snowstorms. This wind is the type of driving, cold, icy wind that creates drifts several feet high out of mere inches of snow. This wind causes the beautiful, glisteny, sparkly winter wonderland to become a deceptively beautiful land of snow that is much the same texture and hardness of concrete.

So with all that in mind, Jake now has a job that is up in the mountains. So far he has really enjoyed this job and knows it will be really rewarding. However,the icy, concrete-like hardness of a southern Idaho wind-produced snowdrift can be somewhat deterring for those trying to travel the roads that are buried somewhere beneath. So now I give you the adentures of the past couple of days.

Sunday Jake received a call from his boss telling him he may have to come up to work that night (usually he doesn't go up until Monday). Later I received a call from my cousin, Derek, whose dad (Uncle Carl) actually is the contracted plow person for Daybreak Canyon (where Jake works). They usually only call in Uncle Carl to plow when it's really bad (the owner's brother, who works there also, usually does it with his pickup because it's a lot cheaper). Well, it was really bad so Uncle Carl was plowing the road on Sunday with the grader and a huge v-plow on front. We are talking huge equipment here. Well, as I mentioned, Derek called me and told me Ben had been plowing and gotten his pickup stuck in a huge drift so Carl went up to plow and he ended up not being able to get back through because the wind was drifting the road shut quicker than they could plow. So Derek said to tell Jake not to try to get up there there was no way anyone could get through all those drifts. Then Jake's boss called and said the same thing. So my uncle Carl got lucky and got to stay the night up at a lodge full of troubled teenagers. Apparently he just missed an episode where one of the boys got upset over something and picked up a wrench and proceeded to throw it through one of the lodge windows, then grabbed another one and through it through the windshield of one of the employee's cars, then broke out the back window of the camp's Excursion (I'm guessing Uncle Carl is glad he missed all that, he probably wouldn't have wanted to stay there after witnessing it!). So Carl spent Sunday night at Daybreak Canyon and told his son, Derek, to bring the Cat with the plow on it up the next day (the Cat is much slower, but more powerful since it has tracks in stead of tires). I'm not exactly sure what all happened there, but Monday morning my Dad got a call asking if he could bring his four-wheelers up to the point where all the heavy drifting was and haul people in and out over the drifts with the four-wheelers. (Carl needed to get home, as well as the weekend staff and Jake needed to get up there.) What's so funny about all this is that we didn't know when Jake got the job that they had contracted with my Uncle Carl and they didn't know, of course, that Jake was related to Carl. Then, my parents didn't know any of these people at Jake's work, but they found out Jake's in-laws had four-wheelers and so that got my parents involved. So yesterday Derek came with his pickup and one of the four-wheelers to pick up Jake and all his things and my parents followed with their pickup and the other four-wheeler. Once they got up in the mountains, they had to shuttle people in and out of Daybreak Canyon with the four-wheelers because they were light enough to go on top of the snow drifts (well, supposedly--Jake sunk his like three or four times, but was able to make it eventually). Each trip took like 45 minutes one way (the spot they were going from is usually only 15 minutes from the lodge), but they managed to get Uncle Carl and Janelle out of there and get Jake in there. And needless to say, Jake most likely won't be commuting back and forth this week, he's just staying up there all week.

Yeah, so while some consider their morning commutes to be a pain, they should think about riding 45 minutes on a four-wheeler across a frozen tundra of snow drifts just to get to work! It's a good thing Jake is loving his job and that he loves the outdoors and adventure! (I guess it's also a good thing he's related to so many people with so much equipment--it's coming in very handy for his job!). I'm just glad everyone got safely where they were going--especially since nearly all of them were my family!