Another Fine Mess

Late on Thursday evening it began to snow, and it didn't stop until noon on Friday.

The Bloody Long Island rail Road had pre-emptively initiated plan "run only as few trains as you can get away with" and most of those didn't run as the eight inches or so of snow (much less in places) brought the railway to its knees. The new snow clearing machine (they only bought the one) was nowhere in evidence although they drove us nuts in the fall singing its praises an those of their brilliant "planners" for having the audacious forwardness of thinking to actually acknowledge that in winter it snows and that the ridership is beginning to notice that the Bloody Long Island Rail Road didn't seem to have any sort of mitigation system for getting the tracks cleared. No doubt they were waiting for better weather in which to give it a push round the tracks.

Once the snow stopped falling I pushed the snow away from the front door¹, dug a path to the garage and prepared to fire up Troll, the Snowblower of Supreme Spiffiness.

First I had to get some power to the extension cord for the electric start, for I was not in the market for the dislocated shoulder and pulled muscles so often the result of attempting to start a small engine in extremely cold conditions by means of the recoil starter².

The only source was the multi-point adaptor that is part of the Chateau Stevie Xmas Illumination Extravaganza, but the lights are on a light sensitive timer that were then bathed in daylight and hence the power was off. It is possible to turn the power on with a rotary switch on the timer, but doing so requires clambering behind the overgrown Alberta Spruce hedge in front of the front bedroom wall, and there was eight inches of snow piled up all over the place complicating matters.

Heaving a sigh of resignation³ I waded over the snow to turn on the power, but immediately had to confront a new problem; the self-inflating tree c/w snowman honor guard was buried under eight inches of whitestuff and the fan unit would in all likelihood overheat and short out were I to follow my inclination to ignore it.

So I spent ten minutes exhuming the wretched thing and kicking out an air path, freeing the guylines and untwisting the drunken snowScotsman which had been twergled in the night's wind, cutting off the flow of air to that part of the sculpture. Only then could I clamber into the narrow space between wall and trees to switch on the power and spend another two minutes rattling extension cord connections to get the lights on.

I connected Troll to the power pumped like mad on the Rubber Bulb of Carburetor Primage until I could feel resistance under my thumb, switched the magneto on⁴ and pressed the starter.

There was an ear-splitting ratcheting sound as the starter kicked over, then the hearty ear-splitting chugging of the engine began, clouds of blue chocking smoke belched from the muffler and once more we had life, life, LIFE! AHAHAHAHAHA!

It took only about an hour to clear the driveway, moving cars into cleared spaces and mowing the snow where they had been moments before. In places the snow was over two feet thick around the cars where it had been drifted by the high winds., Then I nipped next door and helped Mr Singh's son dig out.

On my way back I ran out of gas, so I lugged troll into my driveway by sheer manly strength, undid the gas cap and leaned over to double check I really did have no gas in Troll's tank. This was when I made a mistake I've made before and hence feel all the more stupid for making that day. I placed my hand on the muffler to support me as I peered into the tank.

The next few minutes were a blur of pain, improvised dance and class four Words of Power.

The muffler is essentially a cube-like metal box with a pipe sticking out the side. The flat top is deceptive and completely exposed to the air and to passing flesh. It is very easy to lean on this thing because a number of controls for the restarting process are in close proximity to the damn thing. It begs to be leaned on, and I feel like a wuckfit for not inventing some sort of clever lean-prevention device before now. I could make a muffler-guard but it would heat up itself and pose a similar threat, albeit mayhap a slightly cooler one. I have a nice second degree burn across the entire width of my palm on the fleshy part of my hand, the part that rests on a surface as I type.

I completed operations with snow pressed on my hand to kill the pain, and a further four hours with ice on the burn.

I usually don't bother with cold water or ice for burns⁵, preferring to let the pain crest and die away, but this time I couldn't. The pain was quite indescribable and beyond my power to bear. As time went on I found that cool water would kill the pain completely, and after about six hours I took some expired near-Vicodin generic substitute⁶ and was able to stop soaking my hand and go to bed.

As I type I have a huge patch of cracked skin biding its time before it breaks open and poses a huge infection risk.

So life as usual then.

1. At least I didn't need to remove the glass from the storm door and dig my way out of the house like I had to last year↑
2. aka The pull cord starter↑
3. My resignation was summarily declined↑
4. Won't make that mistake again↑
5. I've hit myself with the mufflers on the lawn mower, weed-whacker and chainsaw in addition to the one on Troll, but never in such a large-scale manner↑
6. God bless the American Medical insurance System↑

Wot, No Snow?

Even though it is cold enough to freeze the <insert unlikely anatomical reference> off a <insert humerous anthropological reference>, with temperatures hovering at around 5-8 degrees Fahrenheit, there is still no snow to speak of.

Bloody typical! I spend hours fitting a cab to Troll, The Snowblower Of Supreme Spiffiness, for no tangible benefit!

Scientists should fix the weather too. I'll add that to the list of stuff they should be doing instead of de-planteizing Pluto and removing Lake Huron from the atlases of the world.

Modifying Troll, The Snowblower Of Supreme Spiffiness

Some three years ago I yielded to temptation (I mean, this is a toy and a tool; we are talking industrial strength temptation here) and invested in a bright red 8.5 horsepower two-stage snowblower. I did at least wait until Sears had a sale, so economy was, if not my watchword, my secret club word of the day.

In point of fact, I was also bowing to reality. The snow we get in my part of NY can be sudden and deep when it is all over. Deep enough to make life difficult if all you have is a Toro™ electric snow broom and some rather nice snow shovels picked up in Maryland at the onset of the blizzard of '96.

Clearing deep snow with the snow broom is fun but resembles shaving as the thing can only clear a swath to a depth of about six inches and requires some headroom over the snow ahead of itself to sling the snow away. It consists of what looks like an old-style cylinder-blade lawnmower blade inside a plastic hood, all attached to a pole with a handle on the end. The blades whirl round like mad when you pull the trigger and you push the thing along the ground into shallow snow. The snow gets thrown forward quite some distance.

One year it became very apparent during snow shifting that I was of an age when manual labour this intensive could push my heart into an out-of-design-spec excursion. Yes I could be (a lot) fitter, but there is no easy, quick way to translate that particular epiphany into a useful reality in a meaningful time-scale. Besides, I wanted some tools. Shoveling snow is a job, and for too long now I had been doing that job under a waiver of The Law¹. There were literally years of tool-acquisition "banked" on account of this snow-shoveling nonsense. What was required was heavy plant. Nothing less than a self-propelled solution would suffice.

The machine in question was delivered by two Hispanic gentlemen (I believe these two lads also delivered the new stove back at the start of this blog) who left it attached to its pallet and drove off to leave me to dismount it. I fell in love all over again. Its bright red paint. Its fully rotating turret of snow hurlage. Its 27 inch wide maw of snow-gobbling, able to shrug off two feet of snow without a problem of any sort. But most important of all, its electric starter. No heaving on a bloody rope trying to coax a recalcitrant four-stroke into firing up in sub-zero temperatures for me. That was a path to madness and a dislocated shoulder into the bargain.

I had thought that by buying it I would guarantee the next three years would be snow-free, but we've had quite heavy snowfalls every year but last year (and even then I used it twice). I take the precaution of moving it to the front of the crap-filled garage each November and begin starting it and letting it run for a few seconds every week or so after that in order to keep the fuel system properly primed. It has never let me down, and is so impressive noise-wise, snow-clearance-wise and just about every-other-bloody-thing wise that I christened it "Troll". There is only one fly in the ointment, and it is a big one.

When blowing the snow it pays to send the ejecta as far as possible away from the site. Otherwise, one can find oneself clearing the same snow several times in one session. Snow is often followed by windy conditions hereabouts, and it is gusty wind that changes direction faster than a politician in an election year. All this means that during a marathon snow clearage session, one ends up with a fair few facefulls of icy snow. I went with it for three years but something had to be done. Something as in the purchase of a cab for Troll, The Snowblower Of Supreme Spiffiness.

Now Home Despot sell a couple of generic cabs, but I felt safer going back to the people who sold me the snowblower for one. A quick check on the interweb a couple of weeks ago showed me that Sears did in fact sell a cab for a tad over a hunnerd bux so I off I went to buy one. Of course, I made the mistake of going to the Sears in Bayshore first and stood around like a garden gnome while the staff ignored me. I eventually managed to provoke service by looking directly at one of the sales clerks and shouting "is anyone going to come over and sell me the expensive item I already know I want, or do I buy it from someone else?" This prompted one of the salesdrones to tell me they were out of stock. Then I went up to the Sears in Commack. Sale completed in about five minutes, with a short delay as I once again attempted to use the debit cards Cingular foisted upon me instead of giving me a real rebate².

And then I ran out of time. I checked the parts inventory against the box contents and put it on one side for later and got with the plan, New Bog wise.

Tuesday night I became concerned that the weather was holding in a particularly menacing fashion. Warm (for me, anyway), no appreciable rain, sleet or snowfall, it was all very quiet from a weather standpoint. Too quiet. A Terry Pratchett "lull before a storm of biblical proportions at the most inconvenient time" quiet. Panic was in order.

I grabbed Mr Socketset, Mr Leatherman knock-off multitool and the cab kit, strapped a totally lame-looking LED headlight to my brow (the garage lights are out of commission) and made my way to the driveway to begin late-evening cab construction and installation by the light of the Christmas Icicle lamps.

By good fortune, all the actual cab components with the exception of the u-clamps, nuts and bolts, were painted flat black so they'd blend into the stygian gloom of the garage. This made the actual location and identification of the numerous bent-pipes that would become - in the fullness of midnight or thereabouts - a magnificent spindrift-proof cab a challenge, to say the least. The fun really got going from square one because the cab was actually a rebranded generic "one size fits most" affair anyway and so parts had been supplied for all the popular styles of handlebars (the cab attaches to the handlebar uprights). First job was to select from four sizes of u-clamp and two sizes of bolt before clamping two cross-bars on the snowblower. The ends of these crossbars attached to the upright for the cab support. An L-shaped bar inserted into that and then had to be leveled by slackening the u-clamps and rotating the cross-bars. It was all very tedious and so I decided to press on with the frame-construction and worry about getting it properly leveled later. Before I knew it, it was 11:30pm and I was done in.

Yesterday I rolled the snowblower out of the garage and into the soft glow of the lights on the bushthing in the front garden, then did the leveling thing, getting it done in surprisingly short order. Once the frame was level I finished it off by bolting together the roof cross-members (narrowly avoiding dropping Mr Ratchet on Mr Head in the process) and Prepared to deploy the glorified ripstock nylon tent that is the actual cab.

And there I hit the first major snag

The cab cover, like all frame-tentlike constructions was sized just too small to go on the frame easily and had to be stretched into place before being anchored by snaps, velcro, belts and buckles. When I say stretched I don't mean bulging muscle, clench-jawed type stretching, I mean cab-cover grabbed in both hands while dangling from the superstructure with feet braced firmly against the frame, mouth drawn back so far the actual muscle-structure of the mandible can be visibly ascertained by innocent bystanders from fifteen feet away and screaming the most potent Words of Power in the workman's lexicon stretching.

When involved in this sort of effort I often wonder why the manufacturer just didn't design the frame to expand into the cover after the cover was attached. Screw-thread adjustment, scissor-action cantilever, there are many ways the trick can be done. I can't imagine such a thing would add disastrous amounts to the final purchase price. This thing is a luxury item after all, at least in these parts it is.

Anyway, I finally managed to get the damn thing on the frame and it doesn't look half bad. It does reduce the visibility a tad in the same way putting the roof up on my TR6 used to; there is simply no substitute for 93 million miles of headroom"³. On the other hand, speaking as a wearer of spectacles I can think of 3,842 substitutes for a facefull of damp pulverized snow without breaking a sweat, hence the cab.

I now find myself looking to the skies with a wistful expression rather than a fearful one.

1. No Tool, No Job↑
2. A tale worthy of its own posting. Watch this blog↑
3. To steal the TR7 ad-campaign buzzphrase and use it in a much better way. Funnily enough, the windows of the cab are made of the same stuff the rear window in the TR's softtop was. Small world↑