post and the weather

Hello again everyone,

I'm finally back on line and just itching to go. i have so much stored news over the last three years that i'm not quite sure where to start.

This afternoon I'm off work and it was a bit cold to take the dog for a walk so I was doing some work indoors. I looked out of the window to see the dog sat at the bottom of our drive. This was highly unusual until I realized she was watching a man work on our postbox.

Perhaps I need to take a step backwards at this point for our British readers. Similar to the UK there is a government run postal service here, the United States Postal Service (USPS), for those who love their cycling you will remember they sponsored Lance Armstrong when we was winning his first five Tour de France's. They are pretty efficient compared to the Royal Mail, and they have to be. There are at least four competing nationwide/worldwide private postal companies.

The service runs like any other. They have post boxes to post mail in and they deliver to homes. There are a couple of important differences from the UK however. Firstly post is delivered to a postbox each home has standing out on the road. So the postman never has to get out of his car. One often sees the postman doing deliveries, terrifying all the motorists by driving on the wrong side of the road and just moving from box to box. Each road has their postboxes all on the same side of the road, which halves the danger I guess!! So if you live on the other side of the road you have to cross the road to collect your mail, which thus restores the danger quotient. This is how it works in rural Maine, at least, it probably functions similarly but with some differences in cities and towns.

The other nice feature and important difference to the UK is that you can use your postbox to post mail. So the postman will not only deliver mail, he will collect it from your home too. How cool is that? Each box has a little flag on it and if you have post to collect all you do is put the flag up and the postman will collect it for you. For free!!

Which brings me back to the beginning of the story. So our box is situated at the bottom of our drive and looks splendid. It is white. Why is that a problem? Because we have snow on the ground for three months a year, that's why!! Last year it got taken out by a snowplough, I patched it up to get through the winter and when it was warm enough last spring I went out and sank a new post for it and put it back up properly again. Two weeks ago it got taken out again! A white box on a slight corner, I just assumed it was a combination of our stupidity and bad luck.

Edwina went and opened up a PO Box at Waterville post office so our post could be diverted there and safely collected until I repaired the box. I happened to be in the town office this week, registering the dog and enquired if I had any right to claim damages from the town over the damage to my postbox. The clerk said she thought so, took my name and promised me someone would call.

Low and behold, they sent someone out to repair it today and once he avoided being licked to death by the dog and freezing to death in -14C cold he did a really nice job. Contrary to my expectations, there was no "a white box in Maine, huh? that's sensible!" or "putting your box on a corner huh? Are you looking for an excuse to get rid of it?" Instead there was an apology and a promise it wouldn't happen again. And he did a really nice job!

Until next time,

Gavin