The dairy is five miles down an almost impassable track, and you would think milk would turn to butter long before it arrives.
His attendance flickered even more when winter rains turned the dirt road to school into an impassable track of muck and the warming new year sent snowmelt flooding down the river, whitecaps marching on the Truckee, Sierra pines shooting down the rapids, turning bridges into overflowing dams and widening the waters beyond belief.
As promised, the lifeguard met us some 5km along the main road from Monte Velho and led us, this time down an almost impassable mud track through cornfields, to a camp comprising of three wooden huts and an outdoor kitchen.
The trains – the Southwest Chief from Los Angeles, the Illinois Zephyr from Quincy and the California Zephyr from the San Francisco Bay area – got stuck after 3pm Monday in blowing, drifting snow and ice that made the tracks impassable.
Aid workers said the operation should run more smoothly than the February emergency, when relief efforts were hampered by poor weather, which prevented flights, and sodden ground, which made dirt tracks impassable.
These days a rough track, impassable during the rains, barely connects the two countries.
Yet just three miles away, down a dirt track impassable until rain stopped on Saturday morning, this generosity is of little use.
The Long Island Rail Road expects to run most of its trains on Tuesday, although some of its eastern tracks remained impassable because of debris.
Transporting food and other supplies to the refugees will become more difficult and expensive as the few existing roads, many of them little more than dirt tracks, become impassable.
Her recent four-day trip to the Cardamom Mountains turned into a litany of mishaps – from impassable rivers and unrideable tracks to broken bikes and – ultimately – bodies.
