Flagstaff has this weird obsession with hills. Especially the more wealthy people in Flagstaff. They drive up a huge hill at a 15% grade and then up a huge driveway at about a 25-35% grade (yes, Dad, 75% of all statistics are made up on the spot) to get to their inordanently huge dwelling. Why? So that in winter, they can't get in because of the snow and ice, and in summer it's a struggle just to take a walk around the neighborhood. Actually, it's probably because Flagstaff is a hippy- and reformed hippy- commune. They all just LOVE their trees, and the trees are most plentiful on the hills.
And here am I... trying to deliver phonebooks to these morons living on the side of the mountain. If I go uphill, then I'm pulling a stack of phonebooks up a huge hill: very tiring, not very fast. If I go downhill, I'm forced to fight progress by weaving back and forth and even turning around to go back up the hill to keep myself from going too fast. If I go too fast, two things happen. First, I miss the houses I'm supposed to be delivering to. Second, I hit a rut in the road and watch my life flash before my eyes before the sweet call of death beckons me home. To make it worse, you never know which will happen first.
And the hillier it gets, the further the houses are apart. I get paid (at least I think I get paid: I've yet to actually receive any money) based on the number of houses I deliver to, which doesn't take into account that I can deliver 20 houses on a flat street in the time it takes to deliver 4 houses on a hilly street. As luck would have it, I delivered to the flat streets first... and I got a few hundred done in a few hours. Not bad time. But then I realize that I have some *huge* hills to battle... about 50 houses in that same few hours.
Needless to say, I'm not getting another route, for many reasons. Even if I didn't have two other jobs now, it's simply not worth the sweat, headaches, and potential broken necks to get the piddly amount of money they're paying me.
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