FIRST DAY BACK FOR HOME DELIVERED MEALS:

BOY! I forgot how difficult delivering meals is out in the boondocks. I must say I miss my Santa Fe. In my Elantra, if I need to pass someone on these back roads, with the snow over the ice and a sprinkle of grit in the middle of the road, that little car probably would get stuck... and I almost did in a few places. I had 10 customers... a lot for a rural route. There was a dirt road hill that doesn't just slop downward from the main paved and salted road, but it plunges downward. However, it was well sprinkled. I put the car in LOW and pussy-footed down the precarious slope. The driveway on the left, where I was to turn-in, was not sprinkled, but no problem as it was level, and the steep driveway off that main driveway to the house at the top was well sprinkled... I could drive right up to their kitchen door. However, the backing down was another story. I don't put it in reverse on icy roads in the winter, as sometimes it causes the car to slip, so I keep it in neutral, and slowly release the brake. This time, however, all I needed to do was get the wheels just slightly off the double line of grit and slid backwards. I quickly managed to get back on the grit, and turn back so I could go out to the steep road without getting stuck. I had no problem driving up the steep road to the safety of the paved road. BUT, just as I got to the top a car was coming, so I had to stop. And, yes, that's right, after the car leaves, my cars wonderful new snowtires spun like a top going nowhere... However, I let the car go back a few feet which gave the front tires some grabbing power on the gravelly grit, and managed to get back on the safety of a dry paved road.

The NEXT house was where a woman is wheelchair bound, and when I knocked on the door, she said to yell for Elaine. I yelled, "ELAINE!" I rang the bell, and I knocked. The customer said for me to wait a minute, so I did. I stood in the hallway, and heard her hustle and bustling, and, Who answered the Door... But the woman herself, not her aide, Elaine. She was holding on to the knob for dear life. I said, "Do you want to take my arm?..." She said, "Yes," hesitatingly. I made my arm as rigid as an iron rail, she grabbed on, took two steps and fell back into an easy chair with a heavy grunt. Elaine came out from the other room. The handicapped woman begins to yell at Elaine, who is saying she was in the laundry room with the washer and dryer running and couldn't hear a thing. ...Things weren't going all that well.

For my next stop I knew the street, but the place was a new one to me. I was to go to a gray house, which was the ONLY gray house on the block, so things were looking up. The directions said that the apartment was on the side, Apt. 3. I hoped there wouldn't be a glare of ice under the snow as I walked along the side of the house. There was no apartment on that side, but one in the back. I kept going around the house walking like every step may be my last, and saw a door with a small sign on it, and went up the icy lawn by stamping through the ice under the snow to gain some hold on the side of the sloping lawn. The door said, "Knock on the front door." Duh! I went to the front where I'd started out, in the front door without knocking, and there on the left: a door with a big "3." Before I even knocked, a nice lady aide answered, and got talking about the ice and how she fell the other day. At least I know how to get in the next time.

Though on a fast road, and having to back out of her driveway, the next customer was no problem.... on to the next. I recognized this one from before. An elderly Reverend lives there with his wife, and his walkway was BARE of snow or ice. The person I least expected to have it clear was the best walkway yet. He even came back out with me to make sure there was no ice that I'd slip on though I reassured him his walk was the best kept yet.

The next person was supposed to be on a road I'd never been on. I had NO idea where this road was. All I had to go on was some sketchy directions, where one road led to another on which I was supposed to go left, to another road on which I was supposed to turn right, with no mention of how far between each road. Finally I find the road, and turn right. Next directions were: "Trailer with handicapped ramp on hill on left." There was a trailer on the corner to the left, so I was going to go up and ask, as it wasn't on a "hill," but a car came down the road, so I flagged him down and asked where this customer lived. He said there's someone with that name first trailer on the "right" I went on to the first trailer on the right, and no one was home. I went back to the car and checked the notes... there was no handicap ramp. The NEXT trailer had one, so I went there. I thought, "I had arrived", but NO. She wasn't the person, and when I asked where that customer lived, she said, "4th trailer down on the left". I went on for what seemed like a miles further... you know how that is when you are in strange territory. I wasn't seeing any trailers... Some people call mobile homes trailers... some that don't even look like trailers. This must have been the case. Finally I see a trailer with a gray wood front and an long winding handicap ramp but way up a snowy hill to my left. On the down side of the trailer was a sloping an over 200 yard driveway was not sanded, so I had to walk up from the road. I pulled my car off enough so others could get by, and walked up the snowy slope trying not to slip on some ice under the snow. I was so relieved when the person who answered the door was the customer for whom I'd been searching. On the way down, the most precarious slope when it comes to ice, as your momentum is already lending itself to slipping, I spied some footprints in the snow... BIG sunken frozen footprints that made me think of the "Footprints in the Sand" picture with the poem, and wondered why I hadn't seen them when going up the hill--as if they suddenly appeared for me to safely walk back to my car. I said a prayer of thanks.

"I measured, folks, and this trailer on the left, was one whole mile in on road I'd never been on. They could have said it had a gray front as well. In my 16 years of off and on driving for Home Delivered Meals, this was the worst set of directions yet.

Anyhow, now I know where everybody lives on the route, and hopefully the weather won't be so frightening on wheel and foot as it was today. Back at the Senior Center, I went in, sought out the ladies room before I'd burst, then put in my hours and mileage. While I was in town, I was going to do some shopping before going home, but was just too exhausted and went directly home instead. Upon arrival, I think I was happier to see the dogs than they were to see me, and they were jumping around like crazy. My husband is now out doing the shopping... Well, he had to go into town anyway, so... "While you're there, Tom..." (You know the drill.)

I really looked forward to doing Meal delivery... to driving on the narrow but beautiful winding roads of Pennsylvania, and it's a good thing I really want this, as today was a BUMMER!