Made two passes up the driveway and a path to the front door before the snowblower quit. I've got supplies, and my first appointment is February 24th, so I left a message with the shop that I paid $350 to make it all nice-nice 3 months ago and told them to come get it. :(

ggrrrr...

As I gaze out my window at our still unplowed street, it occurs to me that Arlington Virginia needs more plows and drivers at times like these. But it's such a rare event, it would be silly to always have those plows on hand, sitting idle.

What if there was an Uber for plows? There are surely lots of plows in, I don't know, Pittsburgh, for example, sitting idle right now. They have wheels. Why don't they drive here and plow my street? Why doesn't some company form an Uber-like service for plows, and the various local municipalities subscribe to that service so they can pay a little extra for temporary extra plow capacity?

During power outages, you hear of linemen coming in from out of state to help out. Those are private companies though.

A little extra? http://cellar.org/2015/shades.gif
There is nothing little about snow removal, not the equipment, the time frame, nor the costs. Do they use garbage trucks down there?

A little extra compared to what they are already paying, and compared to what it would cost to buy a bunch of new equipment to handle this kind of storm.

If such a service existed, they could even cut back on the equipment they keep on hand.

They had already called school off for today and tomorrow, and now they have called it for Wednesday as well.

They are using at least one of the school's parking lots for piling the snow up. There are huge mountains of snow piled up blocking everything at that school. Supposedly, they are bringing the snow melter in soon.

All parts of my body are in pain.

What did you do?

We got 26", I shoveled it. Three hours.

mostly the calves and shoulders hurt

Having learnt both Imperial and Metric systems at school, I suppose that I should be able to move from one to the other without problems.
Unfortunately, I don't. I always estimate distances/dimensions in Imperial terms.
If I need say, a piece of 2" x 2" deal about 2' 6" long, I will go down to the shed and, with a bit of luck, emerge with something the right size having eye balled it.
If I was expected to look for a piece of 50mm x 50mm timber 76cm long I wouldn't know where to start.
OK, I could use the other side of a tape measure but I don't hold with all these high tech gizmos. ;)


Anyway, it was pleasing to read this letter in this morning's Daily Telegraph.

That's my problem with metric, Carruthers, I learned the numbers and conversions but still continued to think in Imperial, then had to convert. That's a pain in the ass so as soon as I didn't have to, I didn't and now I've lost all that stuff to rust.;)

It was weird as all shit to grow up with both -old-fashioned imperial at home and in the shops, metric at school, to finally change to all metric ....then move here (a country I always considered "modern") and back to Imperial. Which they call English. :rolleyes: :lol:

Here's Twil's driveway from a couple winter's ago. Shovel that? Shove this!

Attachment 55013

Well, there's 2 kinds of countries in the world. Those that use metric and those who have been to the moon. At least we don't use B.S.Whitworth.

I don't think Liberia or Myanmar have been to the Moon...