Blizzard

Snow is supposed to be fun, dammit!  25 inches of snow isn't, though.  News 12 said Holtsville got over two feet, and considering what I went through this weekend, I believe it. Saturday, I figured out that getting Craig's plow and attaching it to my truck wasn't an easy task.  The frame rails on a Dodge 1500 are completely different from the 2500, plus there's about 5 hours of wiring involved.  So I called up LaCorte Equipment in Calverton to see if they stocked the plow for my John Deere.  They did, and they put one aside for me.  Jimmy and I picked it up and then spent the better part of Saturday putting it together.  Saturday night I took the mower deck off and then made a pass when there was only about six inches on the ground and the plow performed beautifully.  I plowed all the way from the house to the cul-de-sac and it was great.

I started digging out early Sunday morning.  Here's the first thing I saw. It actually wasn't too bad.  I'd push the snow as far as the tractor would push it, back up and then shovel for a bit.  Once I cleared out enough room for the plow to operate, I'd start it back up again.  So I went back and forth for a few hours until my wife told me someone was on their way with a truck plow to un-bury us.  He was supposed to be there by noon.  He didn't show up at all.  I started digging again at 1 PM or so, after I put a new battery in my quad, got it started up and figured out the snow was too deep to go riding.

I got the truck unburied, so I started it up and put it into 4WD.  Unfortunately, the snow was really deep and the snow underneath was turning into ice.  I slid off the driveway sideways and hit a tree.  It wasn't too bad - you can barely see the dent, but it made me angry that I wasn't more careful.  I did manage to get the truck out, though, and I backed it down the road in 4WD with the snow up to the grille.  So that was our path out.

Even with the path I carved with the truck, though, the snow was too deep to get through.  I worked my way down the driveway and managed to finish up most of the driveway by the afternoon.  I made one more run down to the cul-de-sac with the truck and discovered that none of the secondary streets were plowed yet.  I was barely able to get out of the development.  Lauren was calling landscapers with plows.  One of her friends from work had a brother who was supposed to come and bail us out, but his power steering blew up on a previous job, so he couldn't make it.  I gave up after the driveway was relatively clear, but most of the road remained.

This morning, someone my wife contacted came by and plowed the whole road and what remained of the driveway.  I used the John Deere to get my wife's car out of the gat