Yesterday began with a trip to the rec center for biking and weights. Next we went to the grocery store for milk and a few other items. Then came the big one: a trip to my local hardware store. A couple of years ago they had a Wovel in stock. It was way over-priced so I passed on buying it, seeing as how I had one already. Little did I know they were no longer being made.

I asked the owner of the hardware store if he had any Wovels. Nope. He sold the last one a couple of years ago. Bummer. He asked if it was a good tool and I said it was the best. Maybe he can convince a supplier to come up with a substitute.

I walked around the store and came to realize that the place was sold out of salt, shovels, and bird seed. Insane.

When we returned home I grabbed my spade and snow shovel and went back to work on the car. I needed to free up the right side of the car and the right front wheel. This was tricky because the car was parked about 10 inches from the curb, barely enough to wedge the spade in. Also, the snow on which I needed to stand was solid ice. I had to hack footholds into the stuff. Once I had anchored my feet, I could chop away, being extra careful not to hit the tire or the side of the car. At one point I had to reach down and lift slabs of ice from beneath the right edge of the car with my hands.

After a half hour I concluded that I would not be able to get all the ice off the tire. I decided to try and back the car out. No guts. No glory. After some rocking forward then back I managed to get enough momentum to free the car and back it up about a car length. Success. After another 15 minutes of clearing solid ice from where the car had been, I tossed some salt on the pavement and re-parked the car about three feet to the left of its previous parking spot.

This morning I took some recycling out to our trash cans. I had to traverse about 60 feet of “lawn”. Solid ice. It was a good think I had stomped some holes into the snow/ice pack the other day.

It looks like the next big storm, expected tonight, will miss us to the south. There may be a dusting but that’s about all. Temperatures will rise slightly above freezing for a few days midweek. The refreezing overnight will be insane.

Hurry spring.

As I mentioned in my last post, my Wovel snow shovel died while I was working to clear snow and ice. A few hours later, as the sleet kept coming down, my wife went out for round two. She managed okay but the plastic pan of the snow shovel she was using started to crack.

Today I went out to deal with about one inch of ice on the walkway to our front door and in the driveway. I used a garden spade to chop the ice one foot at a time. First, I’d chop across the walkway creating a one foot wide swath. Then I’d chop into the swath 90 degrees from the first cut to make squares I could easily remove.

I thought this was going to take an hour at most but after an hour I managed only to make it to the driveway. I kept hacking away using the same method until I noticed that the nail that held the handle to the wooden shaft of the spade had fallen out. I spotted it on the driveway and went into the basement to find a replacement. I found two slightly longer nails and put one on each side of the handle.

Back outside everything was going great. I had my wife’s car dug out when I noticed that both nails had fallen out. I search everywhere but came to the conclusion that they must have been cast onto the lawn. Ugh. The spade was useful as long as I didn’t pull up on the handle. So I continued scraping and cutting away and found that now the rest of the driveway was easier to clear, probably because of the sun’s rays. I had about 15 yards of pavement until I reached the cleared lane in the street. The ice was starting to come up in big heavy slabs. I loosened the ice with the spade then used our one remaining snow shovel to clear it away. After three hours I broke through the plowman’s barrier in the street. My shoveling form had gone to hell but I kept slogging away. My lower back was now very unhappy but I was nearly done.

After making a clear path for my wife’s car I quit. My car was parked at the curb. I had freed it yesterday but it was now encased in ice and plowed snow. Freeing it will have to wait until later in the week when hopefully the temperature rises above freezing and my arms and back recover.

The weatherman is talking about more snow Saturday night into Sunday morning. Ugh.