Snow Daze

As with every winter here in the tundra, we get those "oh, hey, you think winter's done?" storms.  They usually fall on weekends during March, and so for some reason Minnesota state high school tournaments tend to get, well clobbered.  This weekend was the Girl's State High School tournament, and while we had athletes and their families from every corner of the state coming to Minneapolis, where, of course, this blizzard took it's square aim on the metro area and south - because most storms tended to go north or otherwise just miss us this year.  

So Saturday morning we had sun and the yard was almost completely cleared of snow.  The few remaining spots were in the shade on north sides of trees and down slopes that do not get a lot of direct sunlight this time of year.  Across the street is an elementary school, and the snow piles on the edge the lot had fallen from sixteen feet to about three feet tall.  By about nine Saturday night, when we took the dogs into the yard, the roads had been covered. and the yard was about three inches deep.  I was trying to avoid all the trouble, and pulled out shovel and pushed the snow off the top two steps by the back door.  

When I made the mistake of falling asleep in my recliner Saturday night, my wife did try to wake me.  I guess I was a bit too comfortable, because it wasn't until 1:30 am I woke up.  I looked out, and we were still accumulating snow pretty quickly.  There were no cars moving, no plows rumbling by, just a silent world all around.

At 10:30 this morning I got up and decided to do the dumb smart thing.  With no kids living in the house with us, it's only my wife and I.  I'm in theory done with the in-person three-times a week workout "appointments" - and my weight limits are now up to around 30 pounds, if I don't feel discomfort.  So I pulled the battery of the powered snow shovel my wife bought, and went to work.  

First off no, I do not recommend this piece of crap.  We kept it because when my wife called to return it because it did not work, they gave her money back, they did not offer to replace it or any recommendations on how to fix it.  And because my son and I are that way, we took a look at it.  Which was when we figured out the problem appeared to be with the wiring in the handle.  There's a power switch and a safety switch - when I disassembled the handle I saw wiring from the battery mount to the ignition switch, but no wire from the ignition to the safety switch.  No connection, at all, between the two switches.  There was a wire going from the safety switch into the handle and down to the bottom of the handle where the motor housing lives.  So like an idiot I used a section of lamp cord and connected the two switches, and made sure we had continuity from the battery contact to the spot where the wires connected to the motor.  So when I installed the still charged battery from the first test, and it worked, I knew we had been able to fix what their assemblers failed to do.  

So when I put the battery on the shovel and fired it up, it worked just fine.  Until the bottom of the motor housing hit the sidewalk, and the top of the output chute was still about an inch below the accumulated snow.  So the snow it pushed forward went nowhere.  Until I backed up a bit and then lowered the handle a bit, which is finally when snow started flying about twenty feet.  

I did not do much lifting or shoveling.  I did do a lot of leaning on the snow shovel while it ran, and pushed it into the piles.  I did over half of the back sidewalk before I gave out and went inside.  My wife came out and finished it later when it had warmed up just a litte.  

We're still going to need help from my son on the driveway, in part because that snowblower is much heavier and requires more effort.   

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