SNOW AGAIN

OK, enough is enough. I woke up this morning to find an inch of snow on my truck. There was no warning, no sound of the Bobcat roaring around the parking lot , it was just, THERE!

It is hard to explain the irritation of brushing snow off your vehicle. You start at the drivers’ side using gloveless hands to clear a path to the door. The reason for the exposed paws, my gloves and snowbrush are inside the truck. Once the door is open, you must warm up your hands. I use the preferred Minnesota method of crossing the arms, sticking the hands in your armpits and hopping in place. I call it the “Morning Dance”. An out-of-state driver will see this and guess it is people impatiently waiting for a bus. No, it is only the beginning of a series of exercises to get you to work.

The next objective is to start your car. Sounds easy, doesn’t it. Well, it isn’t. You jump into the car and quickly slip on you gloves. It is important to keep them warm for upcoming tasks in this tiring ritual. Then you begin probing your pockets for the car keys and realize the gloves are hampering the effort. This leads to your first difficult question of the day. “Do I pull off the gloves, re-exposing the nearly frozen hands to the cold or not?”

Not a whole lot of options here. I usually start loudly damning an unnamed supreme being (thank you for the prays of absolution) and yank off one glove. I stuff the exposed hand in the pocket, predetermined earlier by a clumsy groping, and retrieve the cold keys.

Experience has taught me to keep the mitten off until you have started your vehicle. My truck complains briefly, then comes to life with a determined growl. I stuff my hand back into the glove, grab the snowbrush and jump out of the truck. It is all downhill now, but that hill is covered with ice.

I jumped out of my truck gripping the snow brush like a sword. I begin to swiped across the windshield but the wipers countered and with a simple swipe blasted snow into my face. My reaction was slow, but I was able to turned off the wipers. I then cautiously approached from the passenger side to finish the job. But I had switched the wipers to delay and the lifted right side wiper hit me in the nose as I stretched to wipe off the snow on that side. I am not a religious man, but people watching me may have thought so, I let loose with a few damnations of God and his family.  

Finally, My truck was warm and the snow wiped from it. I sat in the drivers’ seat relishing the warm and knowing I would be on time to my job. I step down on the accelerator to listen and see the rpms rise then started to slip into reverse when there was a knock at my window. I rolled it down and stared up at my neighbor standing at my car door.

“Isn’t this beautiful?” she says, “I love these type of mornings.”

All my anger dissolves. She saw this as a wonder, I as a curse. I am still learning in this frozen tundra. THANK GOD!

 

IT JUST STOP SNOWING

I woke up this morning, had a hot coffee and stared at the newly formed snowdrift hindering the view out my window. After one more cup I tossed on my coat and grabbed a broom with the intent to poke at piles of snow in search of my truck.   I didn’t have the fancy remote starter on my vehicle, so I avoided the snowdrifts making noise, found the most likely spot and started tunneling my way into the icy mountain. I took me 10 minutes to clear the drivers’ side, 20 seconds to realize it wasn’t my car and 30 minutes to burrow to the correct vehicle.

As I finished clearing off my truck, a snowflake slowly drifted down and landed on my nose. I looked up and realized it wasn’t alone. It was snowing again. Mother Nature doesn’t have a sense of humor, she is sadistic.

I mumbled a few choice words, turned off my truck and slowly made my way past cars that were once mounds of snow to get inside where it was warm. Entering the building, I held the door for a lady who stepped outside and said, “Looks like some nice person clear my drivers’ side, Thank you.”

A car pulled up and the passenger door swung open as she stepped to it. Before hopping in, she look back at me and said, “Too bad I am not the car pool today. You can finish the job later after you warm up.”

I watched the car-load of women slowly navigate out of the parking lot and swear to God, the sound of laughter came from the vehicle as it disappeared into the swirling snow.

It’s almost 6 o’clock and STILL SNOWING!!!!
 
Occasionally, I have returned to my truck to brush off the accumulating snow. Making sure that the icy collection ends up on the car next to me. I hope tomorrow is her turn for carpooling.


 

Winter is Back

Thursday, it was a toasty 40 degrees with the anticipation of 50 degrees in the immediate future. The next day the thermometer climbed up to a clammy 57 degrees. The weather people kept telling us records would have been broken if not for the melting snow cooling the air. We lost a lot of the snow cover and I could look out my window, over the vanishing snow banks and see the parking lot. Minnesotans were excited and outfitted in their Bermuda shirts, summer shorts and snow shoes. Spring was peeking around the corner!

Then something happened.

This morning, at 9am, it started snowing and snowing and snowing, it hasn’t stopped yet (10pm). The wind is gusting at 20 mph and creating a whiteout. I can no longer see the parking lot and not because of the blizzard. The previous retreating snowdrifts have crawled back to my window blocking the dull view. My poor truck is once more, one of many small mountains of snow rising up in the white landscape. The excessively jolly meteorologists are predicting 12 to 18 inches by tomorrow, THEN more snow Tuesday. It is a heavy snow, whatever that means. And what the HELL is thunder snow?

I am also hearing the familiar rumble of the Bobcat Loader in the parking lot, desperately trying to keep up with the rising snow. Behind the wheel is Jason,   the Bill Murray character out of Caddyshack. Whipping around the lot at breakneck speeds, creating bigger drifts and cussing when the Bobcat blade rips out another rising chunk of the weather-beaten asphalt lot. Occasionally he will slow down and stop near the trash bins to refuel the abused Bobcat and himself.

Earlier this winter, I had the pleasure of meeting Jason during one of his refueling stops. The Bobcat runs on diesel, Jason on “ Evan Williams”.   He owns six Bobcat Loaders and does snow removal in the winter, some construction during the summer. It is a family business because his two sons and wife also run the Bobcats. He won the Minnesota Lottery several years ago, quit his job and bought the Bobcats. He only does certain jobs for his friends and usually waits for the summer so he can launch his 36’ “Dream Weaver” boat and switch to “Captain Morgan’s”.   The guy is having fun and I was envious. We sit there topping off our antifreeze, his definition not mine, and talk about boating. It seems that “Dream Weaver is his pride and joy and loves Lake Minnetonka during the summer months. I asked him why he doesn’t head to Florida or Arizona during the winter. He took a nip for his bourbon, looked at me and stated he doesn’t   know anyone down there, what was the fun. He was born and raised in Mound/Spring Park, MN with no desire to change. His friends and family were here.

Now I am one of his friends with an invitation to spent a weekend (maybe two) on the “Dream Weaver” . I plan to introduce Jason to Bushmill and spend many weekends on the boat.

3 MORE WEEKS TIL FLORIDA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!