Snowstorm

Winter has finally arrived, and I or we have as a city have been affected by it in a huge way. It was actually quite a nice snowstorm, and I’m sure a lot of snowboarders, skiers, outdoorsman/ woman are happy. It was a rough one indeed, at least it’s over.

I believe it was Sunday at around 2 or 3am it started to snow, actually, it was a lot more than snow. But a lot of rain, sleet, freezing rain, and the like. By the end of it all, it looks like we got about two feet of snow. I could be wrong due to inaccuracy since I don’t really measure things too often. But, I can assure you, we got a lot for a first real storm of this years winter.

At around 9am – 11am I was debating whether the snow should be done, but the storm was still going full-throttle but with heavier gusts of wind now coming from the north where Lake Ontario is. I think a storm from Lake Erie/ the USA started it all. People were reporting a lot of ice, and sleet. Fortunately we didn’t get any ice, and I’m glad. We just got the storm from Lake Erie, and the occasional gusts from Lake Ontario, or Hamilton Harbour. Whatever you want to call it. With that being said I think two storm occurred because of the fronts and lake effect snow.

I go to peer outside, and my neighbour is in his garage. I figured he was getting ready to shovel out his driveway which is essentially pretty big, and it’s a shared driveway. So him and I share it, but I have room for 3 or 4 cars, as does he on his side. There’s two driveways just no median of separation.

I rush out there to get the snowblower ready, and it figures. He was just getting a wooden device ready to in the back of his truck to put stone or salt in the back because we all know, a pick-up truck is quite irritating in the winter if it’s not weighed down proper in the back, and most pick-up trucks are rear-wheel driven. This truck is about the size of a Chevy S10, quite nice actually.

I started clearing in front of the garage with the shovel, and to my surprise the snow wasn’t even that heavy. I figured it would have been a lot heavier because of the rain/ sleet/ and pellets all converging at separate times of the morning. By the time I got the door open, and the extension cord all ready to start the snowblower, I figure it was probably around 2pm. I was figuring it would have had a rough start, but, a few tweaks of the choke, the throttle, and the electric start and it came to life with a bang, ping and a tang from the muffler. It was successful, the snowblower started properly. Was it too good to be true, was it going to perform how it was perceived? I think not! I had the snowblower running for quite some time at a standstill to warm the engine up so it wouldn’t putter along, then soon enough I opened my side gate, wrestled with it in the snow passing my air conditioner, and out the gate I went only to conquer a few more feet of wrestling, and finally hit the sidewalk. Quickly I started snowblowing the sidewalk, went around the corner of my house and did about 5 houses extra, turn around and do the otherside of the same sidewalk. Then, I went around my corner again, and did the old Italian ladies corner house too. I came back around my corner again, and started doing the driveway doing my neighbours driveway first, or at least started.

Prior to the confrontation while getting my snowblower out, he said he had to go out and get some stones for the pick-up. But, due to my lack of snowblowing 3 quarters of the way done his side, the snowblower started to choke out from condensation in the gas. So, I readjusted the extension from the porch, plugged it in and it was success. It started again but with a little bit more pop, and ping. At this point I was delirious of the damn thing blowing up due to the pop, and pings. But, I kept doing it anyway. After all, the neighbour had to do stuff today. But, due to the snowblower acting up, that one quarter didn’t get done so I figured, “well, let’s just let it cool down for a bit”. So him and I started shovelling a fair bit, he moved his truck and we got rid of the majority of his snow. Then, thinking, “he needs to go out, we should start the entry way to the driveway”. So him and I started doing entry way. My brother showed up in the process, and told me he was going grocery shopping, and my neighbour asked if he had any gasline antifreeze, to no avail. he said no. But, offered to go get some at the gas station. Just before his arrival from the gas station, the entry way was finished, but, he had to go do the groceries. And, of course that task is a lot more greater. You can’t bite the hand that feeds, you have to supply the chain when you’re a family man. By chain I mean your production of life, your sustaining perception, and your reason to live. Not that I’m saying, if you don’t have a family, there’s no reason to live. There are many reasons to live!

So, after dragging the snowblowwr back to the garage just to let the antifreeze settle. I went back into the house for about 20-25 minutes.

Finally, after that short wait, I redressed my upper body with dry clothes and conquer the quest again with the neighbour. I open the garage door, reconnect the electric start cord, and off we went again. It died a few more times after a little while. But, then, he was like “I have some new gas in the garage, let me see if that helps. Sure enough, after twenty or so minutes it wasn’t choking anymore. But this time, his part of the driveway was clean, and I was working on my half. Which was another story waiting to be prescribed just like your medication at the pharmacy waiting for you when you’re sick.

The snowblower chute, and it’s the epitome of chuting all that snow. The auger is the contraption that feeds the snow, while the chute delivers that snow to another home on the side of your curb, or on your lawn. The darn thing broke! Well, not the actual shoot itself, but the cable adjustment connection did. So, now I can’t adjust the chute’s shooting length of the pre-occupational snow to make it post-occupational, possibly the new home. Now with the use of a damaged adjustment cable broke, the snow flies all over the place now and not just one direction.

So after that, I finished a small bit of snow I needed to finish and it was all good except from the snow being consistent at a lowered pace in falling. The driveway, and the rest of the sidewalk was re-covered. I just said screw it, and told the neighbour to go in, which he did, and I finished shovelling the freshly layed snow from the driveway, and sidewalk both on my side, and his.

What a day that was! I can successfully say it wasn’t a good one because the four hours we spent out there, if the snowblower was working proper I could have finished that driveway and sidewalks then some more in probably two hours. But, ah well, the snowblower serves its justice and did the job. I just need to get it fixed now.

After packing everything up I headed in, came on the computer for another hour and said screw it, I’m going to lay down because I didn’t have any sleep that prior night.

So, I woke up, look outside, and the city did an awesome job plowing the roads, but, what about my stinking sidewalk? The selfish bastards re-covered it again, and now I have to re-shovel. Not only will I re-shovel, but I will phone them, and give them some of my thoughts.

–J