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Feb. 6th, 2008 10:12 pmWhen I heard that classes had been canceled, I decided to take the early (3:52) bus home instead of the regular one(4:32). I got to the stop about 10 minutes early because I wasn't sure if it was the start of a route or a continuation of another one, and I figured I'd be safe if they were early.
The 3:52 bus evaporated, and the 4:32 bus got there about 4:50. When I got to the bus stop, the west-bound #37 bus was stuck at Breeze and Old University. I have pictures of a bunch of people (riders?) trying to push it out of the snowbank. While I was waiting for my bus, the next west-bound #37 also got stuck, right next to the first one, basically closing Breeze down to one east-bound lane.
We made it to State Street uneventfully (slowly because of traffic, but with no problems). At the bottom of State, a #6 bus was stuck. By the time it got unstuck, we'd lost traction and were stuck and eventually had to wait for Kurt (the night supervisor) to come and unstuck us.
Important Madison Metro factoid: Regular drivers aren't allowed to hit anything. Bikes, planters, etc. all count as accidents and drivers get into a lot of trouble. Kurt, however, is a supervisor. Not only does he have 20 years of driving experience, he's allowed to hit stuff if he thinks it's necessary to unstuck a bus. He's also (according to our driver) the only supervisor who'll get out of his car and help (from the sound of it, he's also the only one with a truck, and that's full of enough useful stuff that there's only room for him).
After getting unstuck, we plowed our way up State, trying hard not to stop for anyone. I'll have to check my phone (I called![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
teeka or texted her, so there's times in the logs in my phone), but I think it was about 5:45 at this point. We made it up to the outer loop before getting stuck blocking the intersection. That took a while to fix, and was sped up by a helpful young lady who offered a shovel, allowing the driver to dig the wheels clear. That got us across the outer loop, where we got stuck again, diagonally across State.Kurt eventually came back from unstucking buses up on the square, and unstuck us (again) and basically powered the bus through the mess that was State St. until we were on the square, where we got stuck again beyond Kurt's ability to fix it, putting us at about #30 on the Metro Bus tow-truck list.
This was 6:30-ish. I also have a picture of the bus diagonally across State. At this point, there are only 4 passengers on the bus, all the others being close enough to their destinations that they decided to walk. I also know everyone on the bus at this point. We sat in the bus for a while until they found another bus to take us all home. Once we cleared the square, East Wash was ok (not good, but not horrible, either), as were First Street, Packers/Pennsylvania, and Northport. The roads got better when we turned up N. Sherman, a little worse on Wheeler, and back to ok on School. Fortunately no one was there from Cherokee, so we skipped the entire subdivision.
I finally got home about 7:20. Then I went out and blew snow. I got both plow berms and all of the sidewalk and the bottom half of the driveway done before Maggs had dinner ready. While I was outside, the graders came through and did Fulton (they'd done Elgar before I came home). If there's not a snow emergency, our neighborhood doesn't get plowed. If there is a snow emergency, two guys in graders (contractors, I assume) do a really good job of clearing the roads and piling everyting up at the end of the driveway.
After dinner, I cleaned the truck off and went down to PDQ for gas (no gas, no snowblower!). The roads in my neighborhood were all clean, with some snow in the roads from people doing their driveways. Northport, however, was a mess. I did several intersections by timing traffic and then making sure I didn't stop for anything. I slid into Troy Drive to get to PDQ, slid around their lot a bit, and gassed up the truck and the snowblower can. Then I came home and finished the driveway.
All in all, however, (snow included), except for my normal 45-minute commute lasting THREE AND A HALF HOURS, it wasn't too bad of a night.
Pictures will show up tomorrow, probably, once I've had time to offload them from the camera and clean them up.
The 3:52 bus evaporated, and the 4:32 bus got there about 4:50. When I got to the bus stop, the west-bound #37 bus was stuck at Breeze and Old University. I have pictures of a bunch of people (riders?) trying to push it out of the snowbank. While I was waiting for my bus, the next west-bound #37 also got stuck, right next to the first one, basically closing Breeze down to one east-bound lane.
We made it to State Street uneventfully (slowly because of traffic, but with no problems). At the bottom of State, a #6 bus was stuck. By the time it got unstuck, we'd lost traction and were stuck and eventually had to wait for Kurt (the night supervisor) to come and unstuck us.
Important Madison Metro factoid: Regular drivers aren't allowed to hit anything. Bikes, planters, etc. all count as accidents and drivers get into a lot of trouble. Kurt, however, is a supervisor. Not only does he have 20 years of driving experience, he's allowed to hit stuff if he thinks it's necessary to unstuck a bus. He's also (according to our driver) the only supervisor who'll get out of his car and help (from the sound of it, he's also the only one with a truck, and that's full of enough useful stuff that there's only room for him).
After getting unstuck, we plowed our way up State, trying hard not to stop for anyone. I'll have to check my phone (I called
teeka or texted her, so there's times in the logs in my phone), but I think it was about 5:45 at this point. We made it up to the outer loop before getting stuck blocking the intersection. That took a while to fix, and was sped up by a helpful young lady who offered a shovel, allowing the driver to dig the wheels clear. That got us across the outer loop, where we got stuck again, diagonally across State.Kurt eventually came back from unstucking buses up on the square, and unstuck us (again) and basically powered the bus through the mess that was State St. until we were on the square, where we got stuck again beyond Kurt's ability to fix it, putting us at about #30 on the Metro Bus tow-truck list.This was 6:30-ish. I also have a picture of the bus diagonally across State. At this point, there are only 4 passengers on the bus, all the others being close enough to their destinations that they decided to walk. I also know everyone on the bus at this point. We sat in the bus for a while until they found another bus to take us all home. Once we cleared the square, East Wash was ok (not good, but not horrible, either), as were First Street, Packers/Pennsylvania, and Northport. The roads got better when we turned up N. Sherman, a little worse on Wheeler, and back to ok on School. Fortunately no one was there from Cherokee, so we skipped the entire subdivision.
I finally got home about 7:20. Then I went out and blew snow. I got both plow berms and all of the sidewalk and the bottom half of the driveway done before Maggs had dinner ready. While I was outside, the graders came through and did Fulton (they'd done Elgar before I came home). If there's not a snow emergency, our neighborhood doesn't get plowed. If there is a snow emergency, two guys in graders (contractors, I assume) do a really good job of clearing the roads and piling everyting up at the end of the driveway.
After dinner, I cleaned the truck off and went down to PDQ for gas (no gas, no snowblower!). The roads in my neighborhood were all clean, with some snow in the roads from people doing their driveways. Northport, however, was a mess. I did several intersections by timing traffic and then making sure I didn't stop for anything. I slid into Troy Drive to get to PDQ, slid around their lot a bit, and gassed up the truck and the snowblower can. Then I came home and finished the driveway.
All in all, however, (snow included), except for my normal 45-minute commute lasting THREE AND A HALF HOURS, it wasn't too bad of a night.
Pictures will show up tomorrow, probably, once I've had time to offload them from the camera and clean them up.
