I went to Florida for a conference last week, it was sunny and 80's the whole time I was down there. Of course I was inside 95% of the time, though I did get to attend one meeting outside. Just knowing it was that warm out made it nice. When I checked in on line there was an offer to sell my seat for $200 or something, yeah, I'm going to sell my seat on the last flight out. With the impending weather I knew that was the last chance to get home before Sunday, earliest.
Anyway, I seemed to have picked up a stomach bug at the conference. I hear about people getting sick at these things all the time, but this is the first time I can remember getting something. I washed my hands like I had OCD, but you never know. Given how quickly it came on and left, I suspect it might have been food poisoning too - who knows. All I know is I spent my birthday laying on a couch hardly able to get to the sink for a drink of water.
Then the storm came.
We certainly have had more snow on the ground than this before, but I can't recall getting this much in one storm. I usually like watching the storm unfold on the radar and watching outside, but due to my aching gut, I didn't get to enjoy that part of the storm. It stopped snowing around noon time on Saturday, it really was amazing just how deep the snow had gotten over night.
I took some sleeping pills on Friday night so I really didn't hear much of the wind, but its obvious from the drifts it was blowing!
Dawn was stuck inside working all day (man her job is tough!) so I manned the snowblower by myself. I was out there for almost 5 hours, thankfully my '79 5HP Craftsman held up (really quite surprising).
I could only take 3" cuts with the snowblower and even then it would only throw the snow about a third of the way across the driveway, that means 1/3rd of the snow was moved twice and a third was moved 3 times, it made for slow going. I gave up on the snowblower for a very short time, but shoveling was so much harder. It was quite a workout for the upper body, my arms and stomach muscles were sore this morning! Dawn came out and helped me for the last half hour or so. I was so happy to see her. I was really close to giving up. Jackie actually enjoyed being outside with us too.
The finished product:
They came down our street with a pay loader (first time I've seen that!), the mounds at the end of the street are about 15' tall, huge considering this is one storm's worth of snow.
Despite all that you have to admit it is beautiful:
Today I took my mountain bike with the studded tires on it for a tour of the town, I did maybe 10 miles. Those studded mountain biking tires are the antithesis of road tires, slow and sticky! It was quite a workout, but the studs proved to be a good option, there were a lot of icy spots and snow covered roads. My cell battery died pretty quickly in the cold, but I got one shot of the Tolland Marsh:
I spent another hour digging out the wood pile and straightening up the driveway a bit more. Now I have to dig some potty paths for the dog. Luckily not much snow on our roof so I think we'll be ok with the impeding rain.
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