{"id":398,"date":"2008-12-20T00:26:25","date_gmt":"2008-12-20T04:26:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/heroesinrehab.ca\/blog\/?p=398"},"modified":"2008-12-20T00:26:25","modified_gmt":"2008-12-20T04:26:25","slug":"friday-night-blowout-old-guy-style","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/heroesinrehab.ca\/blog\/2008\/12\/20\/friday-night-blowout-old-guy-style\/","title":{"rendered":"Friday Night Blowout: Old Guy Style"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Snow-mageddon<\/a>“, the snowstorm of the year, has come and gone as promised.\u00a0 Mother Nature behaved quite civilly, for an old lady throwing a meterological shit fit.\u00a0\u00a0‘Round these parts (he said, hitching his overalls up by the straps with both thumbs) the storm began\u00a0at a reasonable hour – sometime around 7 or 8 o’clock in the morning, and really didn’t gather \"IMG_5413\"<\/a>ferocity until after Spouse and I had safely arrived at work.\u00a0 The teeth of the storm were mostly bared during the meaty portion of the work day – a frosty, face-full-of-cold-razor-blades undoubted inconvenience while walking around\u00a0downtown Hamilton, but really nothing more.\u00a0 At around 4 o’clock, as promised (such genteel behaviour!) and in plenty of time for us to journey home in the daylight, the storminess of the storm fizzled and we set out on our journey home.<\/p>\n

The roads were snow-covered and generally somewhat slippery, but more than passable.\u00a0 I think we may actually be in a better position than many folks, living in our current location, because we generally only have to travel over main roads to arrive at our destination – main roads that get prompt and careful attention from the plowing crews.\u00a0 I suspect that folks who live in subdivisions and down residential sidestreets were having to negotiate thoroughfares that were much more generously covered with snow than we did.\u00a0 We really didn’t reach any significant obstacle at all, until…<\/p>\n

…we reached the driveway.<\/p>\n

The path leading in to Juniorvania is about a hundred yards long, measured from the edge of the road on our northern border.\u00a0 We need a path about nine feet wide to get the official Juniorvanian Transport vehicle up the drive.\u00a0 The snow was about a foot deep.\u00a0 By my calculations, assuming uniform distribution and depth of snow (an unwarranted assumption, especially at the roadside where the plows had wrought their special brand of hellish magic), 2700 cubic feet of snow needed to be moved.\u00a0 It was a very physical and very intimdating demonstration of the last mile<\/a> concept.<\/p>\n

Spouse parked the car at the side of the road and flicked on the hazards.\u00a0 Together, we clambered over the snow drifts and headed for the house carrying the groceries we had stopped to gather on our way home.\u00a0 Believe it or not, we had thought far enough ahead this morning to pack a couple of small shovels in the trunk of the car;\u00a0 it was clear, however, from the size of the drift at the end of the drive that this was NOT a job for “small shovels.”\u00a0 We needed to get regulation size snow shovels and a wonderful contraption known hereabouts as the “snow float”.\u00a0 The plan was to carve a wee notch at the bottom of the drive, enough to permit the car to be stored safely off the road, and then see whether we could get the snowblower up and running at a suitable point, either later this evening or early tomorrow.<\/p>\n

As I changed into my snow shovelling clothes and hurried back downstairs towards the enormous task ahead of us, though, it occurred to me that I have a mammoth snow blower in the garage for a reason, dammit, and I had better get the thing started and earning its keep around here.\u00a0 Otherwise, we’d be shovelling for a significant portion of the time between now and July.<\/p>\n

Spouse headed off down the drive to attack the obstacle with conventional weaponry;\u00a0 I rolled the Beast out of the garage and commenced start up procedures.\u00a0 Six or seven minutes were spent exploring the various permutations and combinations of the choke lever, primer bulb and gear lever while tearing prodigiously and desperately at the starter cord.\u00a0 Twice, the Beast coughed to life – briefly.\u00a0 Twice, it sputtered and fell silent.\u00a0 Another six or seven minutes were spent inventing new curse words and wondering when the last time was that I exercised ANY of the muscles in my right arm.\u00a0\u00a0 The book of words for the snowblower contained a long passage that I had briefly considered reading about the importance of the proper placement and positoning of something called an ignition key.\u00a0 I could not believe that such a thing was actually necessary, given the two brief periods of sputtering success I had earlier achieved, but was fresh out of ideas and still had a shitload of snow in my drive, so I returned to the house and began searching for such a key.\u00a0 I did locate a plastic doo-hickey that looked like the ignition key pictured in the manual, grabbed it and – turning quickly to run back out of the house to the snow-covered driveway – promptly tripped over the cat.\u00a0\u00a0 A foul and profane phrase that would have offended Mike Tyson’s evil twin passed my lips and I returned outside.<\/p>\n

I couldn’t find anywhere to insert the blasted key.\u00a0 In examining the motor on the snowblower more carefully, though, it only took me a further five or six minutes to identify it as a device known to those in the technical game as an “internal combustion engine”.\u00a0\u00a0 Previously, my research into these devices had revealed to me that these contraptions are generally powered by a fuel known as ‘gasoline’.\u00a0 It occurred to me that I might profitably endeavour to confirm whether the present engine had been furnished with the necessary fluids.<\/p>\n

It had not.<\/p>\n

I quietly filled the tank with gas, because I had run out of truly filthy ideas for phrases to utter.\u00a0 Engine to “start” position, choke “on”, gear lever engaged, primer bulb depressed, starter cord pulled – and voila, we had ignition.<\/p>\n

Forty-five minutes later, my brave little motorized auger and I had dispatched the offending snow (including that portion of the roadside horror not yet dealt with by Spouse, plucky little digging machine that she is) to various localities surrounding the via Juniorvania<\/em>.\u00a0 I have to tell you that I was feeling:<\/p>\n