I have to stop being an idiot.
I have this inner team spirit thing going in my brain, in which any system or group or game I happen to be involved in, I like to see things happen as evenly and fairly among participants as possible. So when I made a public post on the local FB group about looking for someone in town with a plow that could swing by and help me deal with the blizzard dumping, and fired a message to the first guy who responded that he was nearby that afternoon, I added the two words you never ever EVER say to anyone you are hiring to do work for you: “no rush.”
It’s a guaranteed ticket to the bottom of the list and the backburner of the backburner, and after dozens more people flooded my post asking the same guy for help, and as the hours turned to darkness, I came to realize that he would not be coming anytime soon. So today, on my second missed day of work this week, I decided to try dealing with this snow myself.
I have a single shovel that is cracked in the middle, and a very rinky-dink snow blower, which is also broken in a dozen places but still kind of works. For my first trick, I spent an hour using just the shovel to carve a path from my front door to the street, so that I could at least rejoin society on foot. After a quick warm up, I took a lap around town- only to find everything closed, except my last stop, the corner store down the way. Love those people.
For my second trick, I snow-shoed into my back yard with the shovel, and dug the door of the shed out enough to get my snow blower into the daylight. It fired up, but I noticed pretty quickly that the auger cable, which is attached to a lever on the handle- the thing that makes the snow flinging happen after it’s running- was really slack, and when I pulled the lever all the way it wasn’t enough to engage the auger.
I could pull it by HAND, but that wasn’t helpful- as I needed both hands- so I dethatched it, wrapped it once around the pipe, and attached it again- so now it engaged just fine- but it was a little too tight. The whole handle bent forward when I pulled the lever.
But it worked- and not just as good as it had been, BETTER than it had been- that slack cable might have been one of the problems I’d been having with it being a weak useless piece of shit. So- afterburners now fully engaged, I was able to use a combination of shovel chiseling and snow blower foot-shoving to start carving a path forward, down the back yard driveway towards the street.
A few hours of that, and I was almost to the end- literally just a few feet, and- SNAP- the auger cable that I had tightened snapped off somewhere in the engine, and unless I really want to spend the time taking it apart and rigging it back to life for the 47th time, it’s kaput. TBD. But probably kaput.
I dragged it back to the shed and finished the path with the shovel. Then set to work on my vehicle, and the 15 or so feet of 3-4’ snow to move, in order to get it out of its hole and back on the road. I cleared enough to get the vehicle moving a bit, and retired for a break. I think if I can clear just half, I can ram through the rest with my four wheel drive.
Tactical victories. Nothing finer for self esteem, I promise.
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