Through the Eyes of a Delivery Goddess |
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If you can remember from a previous installment, Open Sesame, I described a house to which I toss the paper on the porch, and one particular morning, the older woman of the house opened the door in time for me to shoot the paper through the door and into the livingroom, quite accidentally. If you've forgotten how the house is situated, I've copied the description from Open Sesame in the last paragraph below. Hopefully, now, you have the picture of the house in your mind again. At the left corner of the house, there is a basement window where the cat often sits. On a few mornings, I've whapped the basement window with the paper, each time cringing in hopes the window doesn't break. One morning, and I'm sure you can see where this is going, the cat happened to be sitting there in the window. I always aim for the porch, but I'm like anyone else, my accuracy is only so consistant. As I let go of the paper, I could, once again, see it heading toward the basement window. I cringed, but then realized the cat was sitting in the window that morning. It was like a cartoon where Tweety Bird took aligator clips attached to a live electrical outlet and clipped them to Sylvester's tail. You've seen the kind of animation... the outline of the cat is extremely jagged and it's feet and tail are stretched out in every direction as far as they can stretch while the cat literally screams. I couldn't hear the cat scream, but I'm certain that he did. Unfortunately, I could not see onto the basement floor to know if the cat landed on it's feet, as the rumors claim. It might have been a Ripley's moment, if the cat landed other than on it's feet. A recap of the lay of the land:  Late Last fall, they removed the tree that stood between the road and the porch, so that obsticle is now gone, but as you can see, they've added a hanging basket over the porch, making my target area pretty small from 20 feet away. This picture was taken around 6am one morning right before I tossed the paper, so it's kind of blurry (since I didn't come to a complete stop), but you can get an idea of the porch, steps, and the window in the lower left where the cat often sits.From my persective, I'd like to describe the "lay of the land" for you. The road past this particular customer's home is a slight uphill incline. From the edge of the road (it's more like a back alley - barely wide enough for two cars to pass in opposite directions), the yard angles downward toward the house - I'd say total vertical drop is around four or five feet. The yard meets up with a porch; a cement slab elevated on a dozen or so courses of cement block and cement steps leading to the porch from the left (from MY left). Since the porch is not right on the ground, but several feet up off of the ground, the porch is actually about the same horizontal level as my car as I drive by. In other words, if I were to lay a plank between myself and the front door - it would be nearly horizontal/level. The total distance between the edge of the road and the edge of the porch is close to twenty feet. The steps and porch have a plain, wrought iron rail and banister around the perimeter. Half way between the road and the porch is a tree - the branches hang down in my line of fire, so in order to hit the porch with the newspaper, I have to swoop the paper in a downward motion, but put a vertical spin on it so it dips down, but ends with an upward motion high enough to make it over the railing. (Air friction plays a big factor, here). The size of the porch is about four feet by five feet wide - not an overly large target from the twenty-foot distance at the street. I'd say that about 75% of the time, I actually make it on the porch. These folks really did not request porch delivery, but they're older folks, and besides, it's a challenge. Another important fact you need to know, is that I don't slow down driving past the house - I maintain about 15 mph. To hit a target, one must determine how early to throw the paper, according to how fast one's moving. |