An Unappreciated Service

Last week, between the hours of 4PM on Tuesday and–let’s say–8AM on Wednesday, some forty centimetres of snow came down on Montreal.

I was teaching in Granby on that Tuesday. Teaching QuickBooks Online with my colleague Ricky Duquette. And by the way, if you’re stuck, if you’re looking for help with QuickBooks or any other business software, give Ricky a call. Especially if you’re in Québec, call Ricky, he’ll get you sorted.

So yeah, that whole Tuesday the talk—on the radio, on my social media feeds, everywhere—was about the advancing snowfall and the ravage it would leave in its wake. Wrapping up the training session around four, chatting to a few attendees until 4:30 or 4:45, when I finally left the hotel shortly before 5PM, the snow hadn’t started yet. So I got on a dry Highway 10 and decided to hightail it back to Montreal. On the highway, I was following one of those big pickups—a Ram F150000 or whatever they’re called—I was following that truck and I was wondering to myself, why do people drive those big behemoths anyway? I can understand needing one if you’re in the trades, but this truck looked pampered and fancy. Not a work vehicle at all. And me, of course, being a number-cruncher and therefore unable to help myself, I also pondered the heavy financial burden of just such a vehicle. Depreciation, ineligible leasing costs, fuel consumption. On and on, my mind went. On and on.

Anyway, whoever was driving that truck must have had a similar goal: get as far west as fast as possible. Checking my speedometer, I saw that I was travelling at a a decent rate of knots (somewhere, oh, around the speed limit) and I also saw that I wasn’t making any headway on that Ram pickup as it left a rooster tail of exhaust and vapour some fifty metres ahead of me. For forty or fifty kilometres, we maintained the status quo. We (me and that Ram) were heading west on a bare and dry Highway 10 with the radio (mine anyway) on a local news station, the whole while listening to the radio announcers as they did their best to gleefully sensationalize what they were describing as the end of our civilized world. Based on the ominous warnings coming over the radio, I knew I’d eventually hit the leading wall of that incoming storm. But so far, nothing. Still though, you could almost hear those announcers rubbing their hands together greedily and smirking evilly as they warned of all manner of doom and gloom. I actually chuckled at one point, listening to some traffic guy, some guy out of Montreal named Jonathan or Jackson or Jeremy. You know those  people who try to be witty and funny? And no matter how hard they try to be witty and funny, they fail? Well that radio announcer was such a person, and those types of people often annoy me. Maybe it’s because I’m one of them too. Funny, unfortunately, just isn’t my thing. You know how it is right? We damn number-crunchers, we just can’t do funny. A sad fact, but a true one.

Anyway, this guy was talking about the terrible traffic and the ever-worsening road conditions, and at one point he explained with great relish, how the south shore, especially Highway 10 outside of Montreal was suffering near white-out conditions. Travelling on Highway 10, the radio guy assured us, was hopeless. Hopeless and dangerous. Really? Really? I was on that very stretch of road, and yes there was snow beginning to swirl about, but nothing, and I mean nothing near as bad as what this ridiculous reporter was making it out to be.

Sure enough, somewhere near Highway 30, the snow truly began flying. The winds were high though, and that wind was preventing the snow from actually accumulating on the autoroute. Visibility was good too, so we could still move at a decent clip, somewhere around 90 or 100 clicks. Once at the Champlain Bridge however, things were different. The snow was starting to come down more heavily, the roads were getting slicker and the traffic heavier. I pulled out to pass a slow moving vehicle just as the Champlain merges with Highway 15. There was a slight curve in the road and even though I wasn’t moving that fast, maybe 70 clicks, I could feel my car moving around underneath me, the front tires no longer obeying the direction they were asked to assume. So yeah, I slowed way down.

I got into Montreal easily enough though, and I was surprised to see that my commute was no more than fifteen or twenty minutes longer than when conditions are ideal.  So yeah, in spite of it all, a relatively easy drive. For which I must also give an appreciative nod to my ever-present travelling companion, Waze.

It was later though, in the wee hours of the night, that Mother Nature unleashed her fury. Which meant, by Wednesday morning, forty centimetres had fallen. I had some work to do, a few phone calls, a short webinar, and by 2:30 PM I was beginning to get cabin fever. And with that came the eventual decision to drive to Ottawa. I consulted the traffic-cams, both in and around Montreal, and then the same for Ottawa. To my surprise, the roads looked good. These were passable roads, Nearly bare roads.

And so off I set. Sure enough, except for a brief squall around Vankleek Hill, the roads were mostly wet. Not icy, not snow-covered, not slippery. Just wet.

How could this be? How could it be that, not even twenty four hours after a major dumping of snow, the road crews had not only made the highways passable, but had even rendered them perfectly safe? As though nothing more than a little bit of rain had fallen? These people, these people coordinating things, these people driving the plows and the graders and the salt-dispensing thingies, they’re magicians I tell you. Absolute magicians. And they’re not thanked anywhere near often enough.

All too often we come across a service we take for granted, a service that we consider not one iota. And today, after a safe and easy journey in conditions that were challenging at best, I thought I’d take a moment to say thanks for what is truly an under-appreciated service. So listen all you snow-clearing people, thank you! Thank you very much. Thank you for helping guys like me (and that person in her Ram pickup) get home with nary a scratch and barely a concern. Safe and sound, yeah, safe and sound.

So yeah, thanks guys, you really did a solid job.