Thursday, February 15, 2007

Oh My Achin' Back


17" of snow. That's what we got Tuesday through Wednesday morning.

And wouldn't you know it, I couldn't get the frickin' snow blower started. Well that's not true. I got it started - I just couldn't keep it started. Then eventually it wouldn't start again.

I watched as it lightly snowed most of the day. It was continual, but never heavy. The local weather kept predicting 4-8". No biggie. So around 5p I decide to go out and clear the drive. That's when I found out the blower didn't work. And that we had 7-8" of snow, not the 3" I estimated. I guess it was 'internet inches' in reverse.

It was cold out, the snow was coming down and even though I was ankle deep, my boots never got wet. It was light, but man there was a lot of it. The length of the driveway is about 80' and maybe 7' wide and that doesn't include the top of the drive.

By the time I got the 80' x 7' portion done, two more inches had fallen. Ok - we officially surpassed the 8" that were predicted and had 14 more hours before the storm was to be over. This was not looking good. I actually went back and cleared the other 2" before heading indoors. I knew I was going to be in pain by the time I put the shovel back in the garage. And the pain presented itself before I went to bed - but it got worse as Wednesday wore on.

Ruckiry (not Jon's boss), Denton got the snow blower fixed yesterday morning. All we needed was a new spark plug - which he pulled from the lawn mower. I wasn't sure how we'd clear the drive of the additional 8-9" that fell during the night if we didn't have the blower. And had we not cleared the 7-8" the night before - we couldn't have cleared the entire 17" with the snow blower.

The two feet at the end of the driveway, deposited by our local city snow plow, was another story.

But the snow is done and the sub-zero temps are setting in. We might get into the 30s sometime next week. MAYBE.

3 comments:

Sue said...

Holy shit! That's a lot of snow!

Joshua said...

I'm ready for Spring. We only got about an inch of snow, covered over top of an inch of ice. The ice was really compacted and I just gave up on even trying to work through it. At one point, I got frustrated, and used a hammer - around the porch. I think it just compacted the ice even more.

Chox said...

Why do you think I moved to California? That light, feathery snow is okay...I could clear the drive in 20 minutes with a shovel. But I hated that heavy, wet, lake-effect snow that had an inch of slush at the bottom. It stuck to the shovel, and I threw out my back when I was only 15.