The Old Man and the Street

Early this morning, almost a month after purchasing a snowblower*, we got enough snow for me to use the darned thing. During the day today, we got enough snow for me to use it again! And it’s still snowing! I’ve had my fun now can you please STOP WITH THE SNOWING??

Listen.

I grew up in the South. I never saw snow fall until I move Up North for college. Remember that cheesy claymation Christmas special where Jack Frost touches the windows in the house with his finger and they frost over? I had no idea WHAT IN THE HELL THAT WAS. “Mom, what is that stuff all over the windows? Why aren’t they cleaning it off? Is it permanent? Is it carcinogenic?”

I never had to shovel snow–instead, I got to mow the grass for nine months out of the year. In the middle of the summer, I had to cut it every five days in the raging heat and humidity. To this day, I’d rather saw off my arms than step foot behind a lawnmower, but snow, now that’s different! The novelty of snow still hasn’t worn off, and I don’t mind shoveling or sweeping it, but I, really like blowing it.

So I bought a snowblower.

I’ve discovered that there are a few tricks to buying a snowblower. First, get out and buy it before the first big snowfall. After the first big snowfall, your only choices are going to be the cheepie plastic ones that run on 9 volt batteries, and the $1500 ones that, in addition to removing snow, can also rip up sod, shrubs, and 200 year old redwoods. Second, go to Home Depot and scope out the models that they have. Then spend hours Googling and clicking around Epinions.com to help figure out which brand and model you want. Now once you’ve decided on the one you want (I decided to go with a Toro), if Home Depot carries that model (and in my case, they did), scour the internet for the cheapest price you can find for the snowblower in question. In my case, I found a site that had my snowblower for $129 cheaper than Home Depot. Print out the page in question and bring it to Home Depot–they’ll honor any advertised internet price that’s cheaper than their price.

Back to the snow.

The snowblower works really well–starts immediately and throws the snow REALLY FAR. So far, in fact, that I had to re-do the sidewalk after overshooting the front lawn from the driveway. Heck, I could blow the snow onto your driveway if I wanted to. The real trick is moving snow from the middle section of my driveway, which is wedged between my house and the building next door, to either the front yard or the back yard since I can’t really pile it up anywhere. This entails blowing the snow towards the end of the driveway and then blowing it again onto the front (or back lawn). M. was watching me the whole time with that “Are you done playing?” look. Well, it was fun…

So now it’s off to bed, cause I’m going to have to get up in the morning and displace another six inches of the white stuff. And you know what? I can’t wait.

* Yes I know it’s technically a snow thrower, but it’s just so much easier to say snowblower. Snowblower snowblower snowblower snowblower. See?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 5th, 2005 at 4:00 pm and is filed under Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.