I did a route today that I hadn't done in 3 months. It is seared into my memory because the first time I did it was July 3. I had just been hired, I was unfamiliar with everything, it was raining, and this route is all alleys. The only good thing back then was that, since I was new, I was assigned only one route, and nothing extra. This one is off Vance Jackson, covering Wayside, Saratoga, Sullivan, et. al.
Back on July 3, I thought to myself, well, I'm off tomorrow, so I'll throw everything I got into this one and try to finish. It took me seven hours. I was completely exhausted by the time I finished, and I couldn't find all the meters.
When I did it three months ago, I did it faster than that, but still pretty slow. I had also taken a can of paint with me and marked some of the harder to find meters.
Today, although having skipped it for the past two cycles, I finished it in 3 3/4 hours, almost half the time it took me the first time I did it. And this time I got every single meter.
That's some pretty good progress, and I even impressed myself. Even though I had extra work to do after I finished it, I was still done with everything by 12:45.
By the way, whoever thought it was a good idea to extend DST was an idiot. It means I've had to spend way too much time trying to read meters with a flashlight in the dark every morning. I'm sure it was some office-bound bonehead who doesn't have a clue about what outside workers have to put up with. We need daylight to work on the outside, and having to wait 30-45 minutes for enough daylight to see by just doesn't cut it. It will be nice to be able to start work with the sun already up come Monday.
I had one scare today. Walked past some heavy hedge brush and came across an open back gate. I was walking in the middle of the alley, so I was about two feet lower than everyone's back yards. I looked to the side and found myself at eye level with an unsecured Great Dane. Got lucky this time. This is the first Dane I've seen that was more afraid of me than I was of him. He backed up a couple of steps and I reached in with the meter hook and pulled the gate closed. Getting bitten by that huge sucker would have ruined my whole weekend.
People who come outside and scream at their dogs to stop barking really annoy me. The dogs are supposed to bark when some stranger goes walking down the alley behind your house. Just let them bark. Make sure they can't get out of your yard, but let them bark. Screaming at them just adds more noise and encourages them to bark even more. I already have to put up with enough noise from barking dogs without having to add in the screams of some idiot.
A neighbor of mine used to have a couple of Great Danes, and they were the biggest puppies I have ever met. They just wanted to jump up on you, lick you, and lay in your lap.
ReplyDeleteOf course, the problem was they were----Great Danes.
I said "Ooof!" a lot when I visited his house.
Small world...I used to live on wayside. Whenever the garbage man CPS or whatever drove down the alley about 50 dogs would go nuts.
ReplyDeleteI would take a shortcut down those alleys once in a while but gave that up when big dogs would jump the fence to check me out.
I don't really mind the dogs that are protecting fron "strange",,,but it really gets my teeth to grinding when I have to listen so some anclebiter yapping away the entire time I'm burying a cble.
ReplyDeleteUsually these yards have the most time consuming gardens to try to *not* f*ck-up, too.
That is one very nice thing about living in Arizona, we don't use daylight savings time. Now the big disadvantage of that is that it's always hard to keep track of international time changes when we just stay the same.
ReplyDelete