One Last Repair, Take 2

At the tail end of yesterday's post I mentioned I would love it if my less-than-thorough shovel repair job was the cosmic push which caused last night's snowstorm to take an abrupt turn and head just about anywhere else in the world. Unfortunately, that was not the case, but when I woke up and found just a few inches of snow I figured that was good enough. However, that feeling only lasted until I tried to shovel it. The weather spent the night wavering between rain and snow, which meant the snow was wet and extremely heavy. This is the worst kind of snow there is - honestly, I would rather have 12 inches of light snow than 3 inches of this crap. It was the kind of snow you can only push for a few inches before it becomes nearly impossible to move and you have to clear it away a couple feet at time, which takes forever and kills your back. This kind of snow is exactly why I have a snowblower at my disposal. At first I felt kind of bad breaking out the machine for a few lousy inches of snow, but I figured it beat the alternative and at least it would be faster. Again, that was what I thought at first.

At first I was quite pleased with my decision because the snow was so heavy that even the snowblower couldn't throw it very far. Rather than the high, majestic arc you get from the light snow this heavy snow was going less than a foot, like the snowblower was throwing up on itself. But, I was willing to deal with that. The first real issue with the snowblower came at the end the driveway. Any time plows are going up and down streets with wide blades on the front of them you should expect a fair amount of debris to be swept up in the process. Now, I don't know why this is but for some reason it seems as though the less snow on the ground the more random crap in the snowdrift. Also, because they had plowed a couple hours before I got there the snow and ice combination had frozen into a nice ice wall at the bottom of my driveway. This meant I had to attack the wall with a little extra force. Almost immediately I noticed that the snowblower didn't have the oomph it previously had and I was concerned one of the blades may have been jammed. I figured I would give the blower a break and started my way back up the driveway, which was when I noticed the snowblower has stopped blowing the snow and was just pushing it up the driveway. Stopping the snowblower I discovered the blades had completely stopped because both shear pins had broken.

Now I was stuck because I had a half a driveway left to clear and a snowblower that couldn't blow snow. Yesterday I was lamenting whether or not to fix a shovel because I thought I could get away with not fixing it for a few months. As much as I wanted to just put the snowblower back in the shed and shovel the rest of the driveway, I didn't think that would be a good idea because I would probably forget about it until the next time it snowed and because the snowblower wasn't throwing the snow all the way off the driveway the uncleared half now had 8 inches of heavy, wet snow on it. This meant I was going to have to fix the blades in the freezing rain (this was when thoughts of moving to Arizona started going through my mind). I don't know if you have ever changed a shear pin in a snowblower, but it is one of those tasks which seems like it should be very straightforward, but always ends up sucking. First you have to get the remnants of the last pins out and I think it goes without saying they will have stopped at an angle which makes that a pain in the ass. Then you need to put the new pins in and tighten the bolts and again the blades make doing that a process which seems like it should be much easier.

Even with both blades finally turning it still wasn't a smooth process because snowblowers aren't really the kind of thing which should be tilted for long stretches of time. That meant in addition to the blades still getting clogged with the heavy snow, now the snowblower saw fit to turn itself off whenever I paused or ran into a particularly tough pile, which was every time I got to the end of the driveway. Plus, the delay had just given the snow time to solidify in the chute, which means I was now throwing bricks of ice about six inches, which made making any progress a pain. It became quite the ordeal. About the fourth time the snowblower just turned itself off I pretty much gave up. You know, I have a theory that more things break in the winter time because of the harsher conditions and I would be fine with that, except all the things that have been breaking lately are supposed to be used in the winter. I mean, I don't care if my snowblower is running fine in August. But when it can't perform the one job it was designed for that is a problem. Either way, what I really want is for this to be the last time I have to deal with this kind of thing for several months. And this time, I seriously mean it.