03.17.07
Moving snow
I would like to take a minute to thank Arthur Sicard for his most wonderful invention, the snow blower. In past residences, I’ve only had to shovel maybe 10 feet of side walk and around the car. At our new house, we have a driveway that isn’t very long (50 feet from the road to the turn-about) or wide (about 12 feet wide along the drive with the turn-about approximately 20 feet across) but the real bugger about it is the incline. Our house sits down the hill from the road (if I look out my living room window, I’m eye-level with the road.)
Our first two snow falls only amounted to an inch or two each so shoveling wasn’t necessary. The third snow fall was 1.5 inches of snow followed by 1.5 inches of ice. That’s a lot of heavy lifting. It took me over 3 hours to get the enough of the drive way shoveled so my wife could get to work (I didn’t shovel out my side of the drive because I had no intention of driving to work for the next 2 weeks so I piled snow there.) My back was screaming in pain and I just collapsed on the couch for a while when I was finished.
Shortly after, I was talking to my father on the phone and the subject of shoveling snow came up. He said that he had a snow blower that he hasn’t used in years. Well damn, when the snow melted, Denise and I packed an overnight bag into the Blazer and drove to my parents house! We returned home with the aforementioned snow blower. Now, two snow falls later, I’m a much happier person. It takes less than an hour to clear the turn-about and drive way of snow and my back isn’t ready to break (pushing/pulling the snow blower up and down the incline without slipping is still tough going.)
So, thank you Arthur! You, sir, rock!
