Saturday was cleanup day. I started it off by breaking my snowblower. This one is not as easy to fix/workaround. What it looks like happened was the shear pin broke, but instead of falling out, it got wedged in between the inner shaft and the auger. The end result is that part of the shear pin is still in there, but I can't move the auger to get it out. I am not sure how to fix this without disassembling the whole front end of the snowblower and beating on it.
I ended up using the tractor for the whole driveway. It is kind of a pain to do, but I have at least done it before. The tractor isn't heavy enough to push it the whole length of the driveway, so I have to do 10 feet at a time, and the driveway is three to four passes wide, push that down to the apron (with the bucket, not the blade, the blade will destroy the driveway), and then push it off to the side afterwards. I did the bottom thirty or so feet and then decided that my truck can drive over it so I didn't care enough to do the rest.
Things were melting surprisingly quick on Saturday. The carport was already starting to shed the snow by the afternoon when I finished clearing. I am mildly curious why the front slides so much faster than the back; the back should get more sun.
Sunday I did get up to the shed and out for a bit. I pulled out the stuff I am bringing to KY.
I also took a peek at the coverings I installed. they didn't blow away which is good. I will leave them there until the snow slides off the roof.
I contemplated moving them and working on the shed floor, but I didn't get motivated enough. I also had a drive in my Drobo die since things always break in bunches. Ugh. So I spent a good chunk of Sunday ordering new drives and sorting through the stuff on the NAS I bought from Mike, since it didn't have enough free space to blanket copy everything over from the Drobo. He has a bunch of movies and stuff on there that I don't have, so I am poaching some of the data before I wipe it.
I also pulled out the new toys that I got a while ago. I got a grinder and a cheese grater attachment. They are cheap knock offs, but appeared to work. The meat grinder doesn't fit well on the mixer and wobbles a bit, but it worked fine. There is a little bit of waste (meat that doesn't get ground), but not nearly as bad as the reviews made it it sound like.
The cheese grater has a pretty significant flaw. You can't actually put a block of cheese in it, I had to chop it in half.
That turned out to be a good thing since I was running the machine at full speed. It grated the half block of cheese in seconds before I could slow it down. So the burgers were very cheesy. It is also worth noting that at full speed the cheese gets sprayed out everywhere. The grater actually had more waste than the grinder, which was a bit disappointing, but might be because of going crazy at the beginning. I ran them through the dishwasher (no attachments I found are actually dishwasher safe) and nothing bad happened which is also a plus.
One of the other things I did on Sunday while I was waiting for files to move around was I took the GoPro out for a ride to see if it would handle being on top of the truck. I added a wire looped around the mounting just in case bad things happened. The magnet I am using has a 90lb pull strength (for a < 5lb camera), but that doesn't necessarily translate to torque strength from air drag at 70mph. It also doesn't mean that the molded plastic mounting hardware could take it.
The extra wire was unnecessary. Everything worked as hoped; it didn't move and is still pointed correctly. I may or may not have been going 80 on route 10, and there was swirling winds, so it should handle the slower speeds I travel with the camper with aplomb. Now I just need to learn how to use the GoPro.
As you might expect, snow coverage is back up to 100%. Tomorrow is March, so I can get the ball rolling on getting my new tires and registration and all my birthday tax from the state.
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