I noticed last weekend that the forecast is calling for this year's first inclement weather by Tuesday night into early Wednesday, an event

I typically look forward to seeing each year.

However, the timing is a little off, since Wednesday morning is when I usually get things rolling for the newspaper — traveling to Wilkes County to get the paper printed. I usually leave out right around 6 a.m. to start the arduous drive off the mountain via N.C. 18, my weekly routine for the past six years or so.

While I have done things that are more enjoyable, I generally like the change of pace. All week long I work with reading and editing documents, answering calls and emails, writing stories and going out to take photos and interview folks. It isn't always fun, but it is usually an interesting job. As I told someone before, if any job was fun all the time, they wouldn't have to pay people to do it.

Anyway, on Wednesdays, I get to do some different kinds of work, like make plates for the big press and work up negatives of pages to make the plates with. It is the last step in the production of a newspaper. After the plates are made, which are really just big aluminum copies of facing pages, they are placed on the press by people who know what they are doing, or at least pretend to. Then, after much button pushing, knob twisting and paper changing, a finished product generally rolls out on a conveyor belt in a reasonable amount of time.

Sometimes it is good to be involved in the entire process of starting with an interview or story from someone else, putting it on the page and then making negatives and then plates only to finally watch it roll off that conveyor as a finished newspaper to be distributed. After all that, it all starts over as if it never happened.

However, before a newspaper can be distributed, it has to make the long trip back up the side of the mountain from the place it is printed to the newspaper office. So, with that in mind, I return to the weather forecast that I mentioned earlier. I do not like taking N.C. 18 south to Wilkes County when their is snow and ice on the road. In fact, I don't really like taking any roadway when their is a significant amount of icing. I can handle the snow just fine, thank you. But the ice? Save it all for New York or Chicago.

Anyway, by presstime Tuesday, it was looking like we might be heading down the mountain Tuesday night to print. While that will make for a long day, it will also keep me from worrying about driving down that curvy little downhill sled-run in an ice storm. I think I can handle that.

Otherwise, there doesn't look to be many other options here. So, if all goes well, maybe I will be able to enjoy the ice and snow from my own county and not be somewhere else wondering how I am going to get back home.

I remember one time about two years ago when I ended up driving down the mountain on Tuesday night to stay in a motel room. The roads here were as treacherous as they get, covered with a deep coating of snow over an underlayment of ice. I inched along down U.S. 21 until I reached the turnoff to go to Wilkes. Generally speaking, when time is not an issue and roads are treacherous, I try to take U.S. 21. It is generally kept more clear than 18.

As I was going along, the snow was blowing up off the road and whipping around the windshield, creating nearly whiteout conditions that make driving all the worse.

I remember wondering if I was going to wreck at least three times when vehicles decided to pull out onto the road in front of me or when other vehicles, mostly two-wheel drives, lost control on the slippery roadway. I finally got behind a state truck and got to follow him off the mountain, using the salt he was throwing to aid my traction.

That made me think of a joke about a gal whose father told her to always follow a snow plow if she got caught out in a storm. So, here she was, traveling down a dangerous roadway when she saw a big truck pushing snow. She fell in behind it and followed it as it continued to work until finally the driver got out and walked back to her car. "What are you doing?" He asked. The woman then told him about her father's advice. "That's fine," the man said, "But I am done here with this parking lot and I will be trying to clear the one across the road next."

At any rate, once I got off the mountain, I found myself in a rain storm on the way to the hotel. I picked up a large pizza in a shopping center near the hotel and read a book before turning in, only to learn in the morning that the snow on top of the mountain had melted when a warm front came in over night.

As it turned out, I ended up driving in the really dangerous blizzard the night before in order to keep from driving in a rain storm the next morning. Oh well, it is always better to be safe than sorry. Besides, there are worse things than a large pizza and a good book on a snowy night.

Get more tongue in cheek commentary this week's issue of the Alleghany News!

Email: allnews@ls.net