I mentioned the other day that we were getting a foot of snow. And in the current political environment, that means the state is shut down. Even First Selectman Cthulhu shut down the Dunwich government and spent the day eating the road salt that the state provides for town road clearance. He really likes salt even though it’s bad for his blood pressure. His doctor told him to keep it below 10,000 atmospheres over 6,000. But what can you do? He loves him some salt.
Now I decided not to start clearing the snow until today (Tuesday) because they said the snow could continue until 7am. And even though that turned out to be incorrect (it was a cloudless sky this morning) I was undismayed. I had nowhere to go today (everything is closed) so I had all day to blow the snow off the top driveway. I had a leisurely breakfast at 7am and by 9:30 am I sauntered out and started up the snowblower. And it turned over like a champ and I put it in gear and moved it to where I wanted to start the clearing. Then I turned the chute in the direction I wanted it and squeezed the trigger to start the auger. And horrible noises proceeded from this possessed contraption.
Long story short; my snowblower is on the sidelines. And so, what started as a leisurely day of snow removal became the Bataan Death March. A foot of snow is kind of a lot when you have as much area as my driveways and other areas add up to. In the words of every action hero that reaches that golden age, “I’m getting too old for this crap.” I performed a mental triage of what did and didn’t have to be cleared to allow us to get out on Wednesday morning. I cleared the area in front of the garage. I cleared a path from Camera Girl’s car to the upper driveway and I cleared the whole upper driveway including the thirty inches of compacted snow and ice that the plough trucks sealed my driveway in with. That last part was rough. I abandoned the lower driveway altogether. I left snow sitting close to the front door and I didn’t even clear the area around the shed (other than a path to get in and out of it). And even with these omissions I didn’t get finished until an hour after sunset.
And now I ache in every joint and every muscle. The piles of snow have gotten so high that I had to pitch each shovelful with all the force I could generate by rotating the shovel in a long arc. If there were an Olympic event in snow tossing, I might have broken the world record. So, I got in and there was a very nice dinner waiting for the “conquering hero.” But then Camera Girl mentioned that the forecast had changed and now they’re talking about snow in the morning. And more snow on Thursday.
Sometimes there is no winning.
When I lived in Danvers, our house was at the end of a cul-du-sac, ant the plow always seemed to pile a bank twice as deep on our drive than on the straight-away. And all I had was the Ace Hardware aluminum snow shovel. Over the last couple of years, we must have gotten a new driver, because he would use our lower drive to turn around, and pushed the bank over to the side of the driveway. MAJOR time- and back-saver. My Dad also relented and got a small 2-strokeToro paddle-blade snow-thrower. Not very big, but light enough to… Read more »
Yeah the big plow guys. This morning the report was for a 1-3 additional inches so the plows were out. But before any snow was on the ground they went past my house a dozen time in both directions. Well they were widening the street which means they were sealing in my driveway with a three inches of snow and slush. What can you do? Yeah, I’m all aches but I guess I was careful enough that I haven’t strained or sprained anything.
Other than the taxes and political climate, remind me again why I never considered moving up there, other than the frozen winters, taxes and political climate.
Oh yeah, other than I was a competition shooter for decades and traveled to competitions all over the place and possibly would have been persecuted or prosecuted up there. Other than that.
I was talking to someone at work and grousing about the snow and she said her kid is moving down to Georgia and she’s thinking of tagging along.
Repeat after me the verbal charm of New Englanders:
We don’t have tornadoes, earthquakes, or alligators…
We don’t have tornadoes, earthquakes, or alligators…
Not totally true, every once in a while we get whopper tornadoes
That’s right. I’ve seen some tornado hits. There was a small earthquake twenty five some-odd years back and every once in a while some doofus releases a gator or croc in a pond because it’s grown too big for his house.
I can think of two large tornadoes in my lifetime, Windsor Locks in 1979 was F4(in October of all times) and Springfield 2011 was F3 (In June more common associated with thunderstorms). The Worcester 1953 (F4_ is before my time but my father in law remembered it having lived in Holden MA maybe a mile from the path of it. That one killed 96 people vs 3 killed in the Springfield tornado. The Northeast is not real familar with tornadoes and until doppler radar became ubiquitous in the late 80’s you would get little warning from weather services. We do… Read more »
Many years ago I was vacationing in the Berkshires and there was a circus being held there on a fair ground. And there were some huge trees torn up by a recent tornado. Very impressive. I don’t believe anyone was badly hurt in the event.
Ugh, nothing worse than going out and having the snow blower choke/tank when there is a fair bit of snow there to remove. A few years ago I went out to snowblow 18″ of snow off my driveway. Went out of the garage and in the first 5 minutes of snowblowing the auger seized up. Some idiot had delivered a sweatshirt in a plastic bag to our garage doors before the storm started. The snowblower had consumed said sweatshirt and bag and wrapped it around the auger. After several hours of cautious work, we cut the sweatshirt out of the… Read more »
I haven’t diagnosed my machine yet. I suspect something really bad.
The good news is that snow blower engines are incredibly tough. And the rest of the hardware was in the realm of a software engineer (me 🙂 ) to debug and fix. The hard part is as time goes on the parts get hard to find for older models. That finally forced my last upgrade in 2021 as my vintage 1996 snowblower, bought at Lechemere (locals will understand) needed a clutch part that just wasn’t made anymore.
Tregonsee, it turns out the augur system was just blocked with ice. I poured some hot water down the chute today and the thing works fine. But it’ll take until April to get my aches and pains to subside. About a year ago the transmission for the wheels died and I luckily have a son-in-law who is a mechanical savant and he replaced it for me saving most of a thousand dollars that the local repairman quoted me. I truly am getting too old for this crap.