“Yes ... if it’s not snowing.”

This was the answer an uncle gave me recently when I asked if he’d be free for lunch a few weeks into the future. It’s an answer familiar to anyone who loves someone on our local highway crews. 

Of course he’d mention snow, you may be thinking. We live in upstate New York. If you don’t account for snow in your schedule, you’re in for a rude awakening. 

It’s true. Living in the Northeast means handing your winter calendar over to the fickle hands of Mother Nature. 

But here’s where our roads quite literally diverge. 

We plan around snow so we can avoid it. They plan around snow so they can protect us from it.

Most of us call off our plans when the weather turns snowy and icy so we can stay safely at home. 

The opposite is true for our highway crews. They call off plans so they can leave home, heading out into the worst of it. 

This is true not just on those days when we hoped to do something fun like have lunch with an uncle. It’s also true when we’re sitting at home, wondering if we will have to call out from work because we’re not sure we can make the drive. 

We’re picking up our phones to call our bosses. They’re picking up their phones to answer their bosses’ call to head into work. 

We’re climbing back into bed. They’re climbing into the cabs of trucks weighing 15 tons (or more), and spinning that steering wheel to maneuver onto that icy roadway. 

We’re heading into the back half of February now, and we’re all a little exhausted. We’re all eager to start planning things the way we do when we don’t have to worry about a sudden snowstorm making a mess of the schedule. 

With the rest of February, all of March, and even those early days of April (it has happened ...) still before us, we’re bound to have to cancel a few more plans before the worst is over. Don’t forget what your canceled plans really mean for the men and women of our local highway crews.