If you don't shovel snow.... (move, pool, rated)

[warptman]

Living in Paradise

Jan. 10 5:00 P.M. It's starting to snow. The first of the season and the first one we've seen in years. The wife and I took our hot buttered rum and sat by the picture window, watching the soft flakes drift down, clinging to the trees and covering the ground. It was beautiful!

Jan. 11 We awoke to a lovely blanket of crystal white snow covering the landscape. What a fantastic sight. Every tree and shrub covered with a beautiful white mantle. I shoveled snow for the first time ever and loved it. I did both our driveway and our sidewalk. Later a city snowplow came along and accidentally covered up our driveway with compacted snow from the street. The driver smiled and waved. I waved back and shoveled it again.

Jan. 12 It snowed an additional 5 inches last night, and the temperature has dropped to around 11degrees. Several limbs on the trees and shrubs snapped due to the weight of the snow. I shoveled our driveway again. Shortly afterwards, the snowplow came by and did his trick again. Much of the snow is now brownish-gray.

Jan. 13 Warmed up enough during the day to create some slush which soon became ice when the temperature dropped again. Bought snow tires for both cars. Fell on my butt in the driveway. $145 to a chiropractor, but nothing was broken. More snow and ice expected.

Jan. 14 Still cold. Sold the wife's car and bought a 4x4 in order to get her to work. Slid into a guardrail anyway and did a considerable amount of damage to the right rear quarter-panel. Had another 8 inches of the white stuff last night. Both vehicles covered in salt and crud. More shoveling in store for me today. That darn snowplow came by twice today.

Jan. 15 -2 degrees outside. More blasted snow. Not a tree or shrub on our property that hasn't been damaged. Power was off most of the night. Tried to keep from freezing to death with candles and a kerosene heater, which tipped over and nearly burned the house down. I managed to put the flames out, but suffered second degree burns on my hands and lost all my eyelashes and eyebrows. Car slid on ice on way to emergency room and was totaled.

Jan.16 Darn blasted white snow keeps on coming down. Have to put on all the clothes we own just to get to the mailbox. If I ever catch the jerk that drives the snowplow, I'll chew open his chest and rip out his heart. I think he hides around the corner and waits for me to open our driveway again! Power still off. Toilet froze and part of the roof has started to cave in.

Jan.17 Six darn more inches of blasted snow and sleet and ice and God knows what other kind of white crap fell last night. I wounded the snowplow jerk with an ice ax, but he got away. Wife left me. Car won't start. I think I'm going snow blind. I can't move my toes. I haven't seen the sun in weeks. More snow predicted. Wind chill -62 degrees. I'm moving back to Albuquerque.

[freezengirl]

Warptman this strikes me as particularily funny since you are soaking up the sunshine right now! Old joke in MN-we have two seasons, winter is coming and winter is here!

[Metlakatla]

I have snow shoveling sweater; it works very well, almost as good as the one I use to change a flat tire or whatever.

[LittleJazzyP]

Originally Posted by freezengirl

Warptman this strikes me as particularily funny since you are soaking up the sunshine right now! Old joke in MN-we have two seasons, winter is coming and winter is here!

LOL, yeah, I can just imagine Warpt enjoying some of those traditional Alaskan winter pastimes, like snorkeling, surfing, and sipping mai tais on the beach.

[Alice2]

Your snow journal cracked me up. Snow is both a beautiful thing and a force to be reckoned with, isn't it?

I have had pretty good 'luck' with snow driving, Wednesday I wished I hadn't had my car out on the road at all, and was in high-anxiety mode all the way home. The snow in my driveway was 3" higher than the bottom of my car, and I **HAD** shoveled all the snow away from there prior to leaving for work. So I had lots and lots of digging to do before digging my way down the path to my door, including moving the car backwards and getting the snow out from underneath it (I had to just 'plow' the car right in there and get off the main road without pausing so I wouldn't get stuck halfway in), and I was glad I thought to leave the shovel in the car that day. I just sat there for a minute overcome with relief that I'd got the car all the way home without incident.

I guess if people don't want to shovel it's fine as long as it only affects them. In a shared pathway, if you just tramp right over the top of it nobody else can easily shovel it either, and then it rains and freezes and you have a semi-permanent condition of a slippery bumpy walkway.

The huge pile of snow I have been getting at a time here was not physically hard to move because I got it as soon as I could so it wouldn't get rained on and weigh a ton and be un-pushable. It can be a kind of a moving meditation thing. I think I like shoveling at night better than in the daytime.

To each his own . . .

I have been wanting to see in the paper here how many cars left the road with the last blizzard or two, but either people are doing a real good job keeping control of their cars or they're just not putting the information out there this time. Inquiring Minds Want to Know

[LittleJazzyP]

You have a very good point about shared walkways. I wasn't kidding when I said I do not have a sidewalk. I don't, and I'm the only person who uses that path, so it's not a problem.

There is one stretch of sidewalk near my job that I absolutely dread. Snow from the street gets plowed onto it, it is never cleared, and the only two options are to tromp over mountains of lumpy, uneven snow or walk in the road, where I'm afraid I may end up, anyhow, should I slip and fall. I am not sure what the law is here, but in my home town, businesses could be fined for not shoveling the sidewalks in front of their property.

It is the one thing I can safely say I actually hate about Anchorage.

[warptman]

Originally Posted by LittleJazzyP

LOL, yeah, I can just imagine Warpt enjoying some of those traditional Alaskan winter pastimes, like snorkeling, surfing, and sipping mai tais on the beach.

Had shaved ice for the first time today at Hapuna, good stuff!

[Dakster]

Originally Posted by warptman

Had shaved ice for the first time today at Hapuna, good stuff!

Wow. Shaved ice was a staple of my youth...

[roadfamily6now]

we don't shovel ALL the snow but we do keep the porch clear and a path to the cars. As long as I can drive out of the driveway, I'm good.

[Gennaver]

Hi,
I'm not in Fairbanks yet but, I spent all of my youth and most of my adult life in a place that got lots of wet and heavy snow and we had to shovel it if we wanted to be able to move our cars.

Usually it would involve setting your alarm to get up in the middle of the night so you could do a first, sometimes second pass in order to be able to handle what was left by the time you needed to shovel out for work.

I'm anxious to see what the snow is like in Fairbanks though and after reading this thread am starting to get encouraged that I won't need to wake up throughout the night to clear out!!
Jen