Tuesday, December 11, 2007

God doesn't shovel snow in Wisconsin

My father generally lets Gd shovel for him. Meaning that whenever it finally gets warm enough to melt the snow away, is when the driveway gets cleared.

Today, it snowed for 8 hours straight today and finally stopped about 4pm. At which time we went out and started shoveling. Well, I shoveled and Ronnie wrestled with the snowblower. Neither of us has any experience with one and it's not the easiest thing to maneuver.

This being Wisconsin, I think Gd is busy doing other things until May.

Pretty much simultaneously, all of our neighbors also came out to start clearing the snow. In my mind, the sound of winter is now the roar of snowblowers and the smell is a horrible gas/oil mixture that you can just see eating away at the ozone layer.

We have a long driveway, a big space in front of the garage (behind the house) and a relatively moderate amount of sidewalk that needs to be cleared. At least we don't live on a corner anymore! Either way, it's a lot to clear.

Thankfully, in addition to a snowblower, we have a new shovel. We still have the old one, but the new one weighs maybe 8 pounds and the old one weighs about 20. There is a significant difference in how it feels to lift a pile of heavy wet snow with a 20 pound shovel vs an 8 pound shovel.

It took us each an hour to finish the whole job. At some point, our next door neighbor started up her snowblower. It's big, and fancy (it has a light on it) and throws snow pretty far. And it can handle probably a foot of snow. She redid the sidewalk for us, which was nice. And then I saw her helping the guy across the street. I guess once it's turned on.... Did I mention that her snowblower has a headlight?!

The biggest challenge - it's been snowing for a while already. The first snow of the season was easy - you just throw the snow on the lawn. At this point, the piles of snow are 3-4 feet high and throwing more snow on top or past them is hard!

No comments: