When it comes to trekking around our frigid, snow-saturated cities this winter, misery does love company -- and has plenty of it.
Everybody's having a hard time getting around, but some have to deal with it throughout their entire work shift. Plenty of folks have jobs that keep them out in the clogged, slippery streets -- bus drivers, emergency medical technicians, highway salters/plowers, long-haul truckers, pizza deliverers, mail carriers and newspaper deliverers, to name a few.
Beyond work-related winter agonies, just try maneuvering a baby stroller -- not to mention a wheelchair -- through sidewalk slalom moguls and ankle-deep slush.
We asked a few intrepid souls how they do it, while keeping tempers checked and spirits up.
For Randy Lundeen and Dave Deters, who between them have nearly 60 years of experience as paramedics, a bad snow can mean the difference between life and death. Not theirs, but those of the sick and injured people who need to get to Hennepin County Medical Center pronto.
Lundeen recalled a recent run to south Minneapolis after a major snow dump.
"Every route we tried was blocked by somebody trying to get a stuck car free, or people walking small kids and dogs down the middle of the road because sidewalks weren't cleared," he said.
He wound up parking a block and a half away from the patient's apartment, carrying both a stretcher and a shovel. They sometimes have to salt, sand and chop away at ice themselves.
"Even if the sidewalk's been cleared, we sometimes have to lift the stretcher, with somebody in it, over a high snowbank on the curb," he said. "There can be a lot of slipping and sliding."
With fewer lanes, wider drifts and slick roads that force more cautious driving, a trip that would take an ambulance 10 minutes in July might take double that or longer this winter.
More snow means more, and longer, gridlock. Lundeen said that drivers in congested areas have been "more or less" courteous, given the conditions. But even drivers trying like heck to move for an ambulance can make things worse if they overcorrect and get stuck, or back up in a panic.
The first thing EMTs typically do when they get to a residence is figure out how they're going to get in.
Now, Lundeen said, "we look to see where we're going to get out, where there's an opening from the sidewalk to the street."
Nasty pizza work
In nearly 15 years of delivering pizza for Green Mill Uptown, Brett Baretz has seen worse winters. But not by much. "In a big snowstorm, it's a double whammy -- we're busier and slower," he said. "We'll get about 50 percent more calls than normal because people don't want to go out, and then it takes a lot longer to get the pizzas to them."
Most customers are understanding, and the upside is that some people tend to tip better the nastier the weather. This season still hasn't topped Baretz's worst snow day.
"Once, in the '90s, I had four or five deliveries and had to rock my car back and forth to get it out of drifts every time I stopped. We got so buried with orders, we had to shut down. That's very rare."
Baretz and his cohorts are big fans -- maybe the only fans -- of enforced one-side street parking. "There's no way we could get around in these neighborhoods without that."
Neither wind nor sleet nor snow, snow, snow
Mail carriers are building their thigh muscles extra big this year. Homeowners with lawns, have you shoveled an extra path so it's a shorter distance to the next house? Kieran Hughes of the Minnehaha station figures only about one in 20 do.
"Some blocks really get into it, they must talk when they're out shoveling," he said. "They tend to be the blocks that have a feeling of good community, trying to make it all work."
In his 33 years of delivering mail, this winter "has got to be in the top three, and we're only halfway there," he said.
Trudging through 3-foot and higher drifts with a mailbag is hard and makes completing a route take longer, but it's the "little snows" that can really mess things up.
"They hide ice," Hughes said. "You can think the walking's easy, you lose your concentration and all of a sudden you're down. I hit it about once every couple of weeks, and I've got a better route than most."
If he had his druthers between bone-ch-ch-chilling cold or excess flakes, "I'd take the snow. It doesn't hurt. It just tuckers you out. The cold, that's murder."
Brace yourself, mail carriers. You now have both.
Bus driving: the zen approach
Taxi drivers, UPS and other delivery personnel are no doubt developing more ulcers this year. But no one has it rougher than those at the helm of city buses.
Tony Taylor, an MTC driver for 32 years who has won multiple safe operator awards, has a simple year-round motto that's extra important now.
"I don't force anything," he said. "I don't take no chances."
As Taylor recalls it, he's only gotten a bus stuck five times in his career.
"You try to just drive according to the conditions," he said, including pulling up a little farther into the intersection so people won't have to climb over a snowbank. He's learned to know when he can't afford to stop in the middle of a hill, opting for the bottom or top instead. And the gridlock?
"If you get past 10 minutes late, you can call radio control and they'll send out a fill-in bus on standby. That helps."
Ice is his worst enemy. "You might slide into the bus stop and not be able to slide out again," he said. "When it's like that, you can't get too close to the curb."
Dealing with a wide cross-section of the public gets dicier about this time of year, too.
"Some people are demanding and not very understanding," he said. "Others tell you how much they appreciate you because it's a tough job. Those are the professional bus riders. But before I pull out for the day I say to myself, I'm gonna keep a good attitude and keep my good head on."
Sage advice for all commuters.
Kristin Tillotson • 612-673-7046
