Careful of the icy patch

Icy selfie

I had to work yesterday. Which was okay in one sense, since it would be my last Sunday shift. We are getting new rotas and there are no Sunday shifts on mine. However, I was quite sad to have to work, because yesterday we had snow and I quite like snow! 

I went to work though, enjoying the snow that was lying everywhere, seeing the snowmen going up, seeing children with sleds and a lot of people out to enjoy the weather. The temperatures were not as low as earlier in the week, so unfortunately quite a bit of the snow melted, especially where I live: when I got home, there was hardly any left!

The high temperatures combined with frozen undergrounds left a big problem for areas that had not been salted and/or gritted though. Ice rinks. And I encountered one. And not just a simple flat ice rink either, oh no, it was uphill! Not that much of a problem if you are a person trying to get from A to B. If however you drive a bus, like I did, it gets a bit trickier. 

A nice fresh bath anyone?

There is a small roundabout  on the side of the road to allow buses to change direction that is at quite a steep angle and that had frozen over. I hadn't noticed though, since the rest of the road was absolutely fine. There was a car parked in a stupid place, but even so I felt I could avoid that and do my tour around the roundabout. I was wrong!

I wasn't even half way up, when I felt my wheels slipping and my bus going backwards. I hit the brakes with all my might, but that low wall behind the bus was coming ominously close. Fortunately I stopped in time. I was however by then better situated and tried again. This time it was even scarier and the wall came even closer! I then decided that car needed to move. Turned out, the minute she would take off the brakes, she would ram into me: she had the exact same problem! 

Help was at hand though, her son got grit from the grit box outside the school and put it in front of her wheels. In a moment she was off. He then went back for more grit for my front wheels and I managed to get out of that situation, by backing out and driving away in the opposite direction. 

Perhaps I won't wish for snow so much next time...

PS: the title of the post today comes from a line in a short Muppet movie: A Muppet Family Christmas. Everybody entering the house of Fozzie's mother is told to be 'careful of the icy patch!'