Blizzardpalooza!

This was one nasty bit of winter storming in the confines of Delaware County. According to the channel 10 Newscasts, our area had 29 inches of snow, making it the second largest snowfall on record here, and now the second two foot plus storm this winter. These are not AOL snow inches, these are the piled to your news and keeps on rising type of inches. Naturally, all that could go wrong with my day promptly did.

For starts, TLA made sure that first shift knew we'd be open for orders. Three of us on the opening 8AM shift braved it in, and although we all arrived a bit late, we made it. Our supervisor arrived at about 10, and reminded us that we were all super troopers for getting there. Interstate 95 at 6:30 AM was only one lane (out of 3) and while there was hardly anyone on the road, we didn't move much faster than 30 MPH. My regular 35 minute drive took about 90 minutes.

Here's a shot of the TLA Morning Go Snow team at about 2:30 Saturday afternoon.

You'll note that we're up to about our knees. When it came time to get out, we both had to push our cars to clear the gate and get on 5th street. But on the way home, I heard a POP-rumble rumble....and realized my tire had just fallen flat. So I'm now sitting in the blowing snow at the corner of sixth and market with a blowout. This is why I love AAA; they would send a repair man. In 90 minutes!! I managed to back the car into a snowdrift (I was previously stuck right in the crosswalks) near the Constitution Center's gift shop to wait for the truck to arrive. It was a good thing, as my spare donut had little inflation to it.

The snow had subsided for the most part when he arrived (about 5:30 or so) and he made short work of switching out the tires and putting air in the spare. I crawled the rest of the way home, knowing that my sidewalks and driveway were - even with the new Toro Snowblower Joel purchased after the December storm - going to be a bear to clean off. At least, I figured, the snow blower would make it easier.

As you can see from the piles surrounding my 6'4" Papa Joel, no such luck. I made about two passes with the blower up the driveway and the rotor quit. Our house is on a corner property, which translates in storm removal terms as "twice the sidewalk, half the fun." Out comes the ergonomic shovel and I step to it. Some three hours later, and I have the driveway cleared and about 2/3's of the sidewalk before I just konk out. I waited till this morning to use about an hour and clear the remaining sidewalk and re-clear the end of the driveway where overnight plows and shoved a new pile of exit blocking slush.

Right now, li'l blue is at Tires Plus getting a new tire, and the Toro is at Ace hardware in a line with about a dozen other machines in need of repair. The pathways around the house are cleaned off and my arms ache. But I am done until Wednesday . That's when the next storm is predicted to land.