Had a good morning, and thought of lots of things to mention here as we cruised down the Interstate. Running out of time before having to head to another town, so I'll only mention one. Probably the least significant.

Driving down one of the muddy roads in the gas patch, and I noticed the huge berms of unmelted snow that had been plowed off the road.

They were on the wrong side.

There is a right side and wrong side to plow roads (and shovel sidewalks) in our country. I've seen the wind rose for our community. "Wind rose": that's a meteorological diagram that shows, in one display, where your winds come from, how often and how strongly. In most places it looks like a flower, with eight different petals for the eight main directions all radiating out nicely like a daisy.

Our wind rose looks like a corsage that's been run over by a truck. More than 80 percent of our winds come from the west and southwest. Its even more skewed if you just look at winter winds.

So anyone who piles snow on either the south or west side of their road or sidewalk in this country is an idiot. Or at least so I thought until this week.

I'll explain for those of you who only know snow from pictures and video. In our country, we recycle snow. It's not enough that it close the roads and plug up the sidewalks just once when it falls. Here Mother Nature likes to blow it around a lot, and use it over and over. And almost always from the west and southwest.

The joke here is: "Our wind doesn't blow. The prairie state east of us sucks!"

So if you pile snow on the south or west side of a road, you get a bigger drift across the road the next time the wind blows than you would have had if you left the snow on the road in the first place. So you always blade to the east or north.

And only idiots pile snow on the west or south, right?

Wrong.

I was visiting with the head of our County Road and Bridge this week, and found out how wrong I was. I complimented him on the fact that he and his crews always blade to the east or north, whereas the neighboring county (where I was this am) plows more often to the west or south.

And you people think you have exciting conversations.

He explained the neighboring county contracts their plowing work. And the contractor is paid by either the mile or the hour. The more often the road gets drifted with snow, the more often the contractor has to go out to plow, and the more money he makes.

So if you plow the "best" way, your road only drifts in on one storm out of five. But if you plow the "profitable" way, you get paid for four storms out of every five. So who's stupid now?

How Republican.