The Burlingames

I was driving through Fridley today for work and saw a fire truck ahead of me. It didn’t take long to catch up as the truck was only going about 20 mph. As I closed in on the fire truck, I was a bit confused by what I saw. The truck was a ladder truck that appeared to have small lights all over it. It also looked like there was a person standing on top of it. I couldn’t get close enough to clearly make things out as there were several cars between me and the fire truck.

Finally, the fire truck turned a corner and my suspicions were confirmed; the ladder was decorated with Christmas lights and there was a guy dressed up as Santa standing the bucket of the ladder. He was just standing up there, waving to the oncoming cars. I’m not sure if that’s some sort of rookie hazing or just something weird the Fridley fire department likes to do when it snows. Either way, it was certainly interesting.

To say I’m tired would be a gross understatement. Work was busy today, so I was called in early to help with deliveries. I drove around Shoreview, Lino Lakes and Circle Pines. After my lunch break I did my normal night route in Fridley and Spring Lake Park. I had a lot more stops than usual and definitely a lot more packages. All that added up to me hanging out in my area way too long: long enough that I wouldn’t have made it back to my station in time to get my freight on the truck headed to the airport. So, I headed off directly to the airport.

After off-loading everything I drove back to the station in White Bear Lake. I saw way too much of the metro today: 135 miles of roads. I started this morning about 10:30 and finished this evening around 9:30. And I’m gonna do it again tomorrow. Hopefully I’m not so busy that I need go to the airport again. That’s always so time consuming.

I narrowly escaped yet another accident in Fridley this week. I was driving my work truck on a city street, passing a gas station on my right. A woman coming from the opposite direction signalled a left turn, wanting to turn into the gas station I was approaching. She appeared to be slowing down like she was going to wait to turn until I had gone by. As I’m sure you’ve guessed by now, she did not wait; she turned in front of me very late. I layed on the horn and slammed on the brakes, skidding on the pavement. She then realized her error and hit the gas harder to get out of my way. She just made it; I couldn’t have missed her by more than a foot or two.

However, the story doesn’t end there. In her haste to get out of my way, she ran straight into the front of a car coming out of the gas station because she was too busy looking at me and not where she was going. Oops.