Monday, December 17, 2007

Cleared out at the Aerie
for now

So, I spend the better part of four hours this morning clearing the driveway of a mere 4 inches of crap. The first two inches (on the bottom) was snow and the top two inches was frozen rain that formed an ice shield that made using the snow thrower difficult. It kept riding up on to the ice cover. Using a shovel was out because I had to chop into the cover to break the surface. Once the thrower broke the surface, it was off to the races.

Except...did I ever mention that the driveway is not pavement or grass but gravel? Even a "little" 5.5 HP thrower can really toss those stones! Once it dislodges them from the frozen tundra that is the driveway, that is. I'd be moving along at a relatively smooth clip when the skids (set to raise the intake to a maximum height) would hook a stone. WHAM! there would be a jolt to the side. BAM! That stone would have been picked up by the two stage paddles inside the thrower and ejected 20-30 feet. I had to constantly be aware of where the chute was aimed so as to not hit either the house, the Tundra, the Blazer or Terry.

Anyway, I got nearly all of the snow off using the thrower and then went back over a small 10' x 10' square right in the middle where I couldn't throw the snow far enough to the edge and used the shovel to push that clear.

That was more than enough exercise for the day. I've got a call into to my buddy Mark up north to see if I should head up there tomorrow to use the 9.0 HP thrower on our properties and then shovel off the roof of the houses and garage.

Of course, as soon as I got done shoveling the drive, it started snowing again. We're supposed to be getting showers all day that will amount to little or no accumulation.

We haven't even reached the Winter Solstice that marks the start of winter yet and already I'm growing sick of it.

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