Snow coverage dwindling down to about 2%

In an odd turn of events, this weekend was beautiful as I sit here writing this in shorts and flip flops.  It was supposed to be wet and rainy, but both days were dry and nice.  Both days got well into the upper 50s.  Saturday hit 57 in Sullivan, and today felt like mid 50s, though my thermometer appears to have died.

The big project for Saturday was getting the car out.  I didn't need to use any more salt, I just went down with the big iron chisel that Matt got me, and wrecked some ice.  Before too long I was able to just drive it out.  I said it would take a thaw, and we got another one.


I need to find my creepers, this was wet ice and I went sliding a few times.


Took the car out for a drive since it was nice and warm out, and when I got back, I decided to put it up on the slab.


Saturday night after enjoying the warm weather, I also did a a couple of minor improvements, putting up another shelf, and putting up the shower head extension.  The shower head used to spray in an awkward spot, down in front of the toilet where it is narrow.  This should bring it out into the biggest part of the room (I hope, the extension isn't as long as I thought it was).


Today I slept in since it was supposed to wet and rainy all day, with the temperature dropping all day.  That was a bald faced lie.  It never cooled down last night, so it was still in the mid to upper 50s this morning, so I went and enjoyed more warm and surprisingly sunny weather.  I was a little surprised just how much melted off last night, so I went and looked at the creek.  It is high, but not as high as I would expect.


Surprisingly, part of the back yard is still frozen.  It still has a little bit of snow too.


The drainage ditch in the back will need to be dug out.  It is running over the top of the ground it is draining so much water.


The ditch is still very full.


I decided to take advantage of the nice weather and do a couple of things I should have done in the fall.  I put stabilizer in the mowers, but never ran it into the engine since they got buried in snow.  Unfortunately the push mower wouldn't start so I poured some mechanic in a bottle in it, since that is the only stuff that has dry gas in it that I can find.


I also and went and cranked on the tractor until the battery started to die.  On the plus side, the battery charger works.


I also took advantage of most of the ground being thawed and put out my driveway markers, even though I pretty clearly don't need them, since I have been snowblowing without them all winter.


The driveway is mushy.  Even where I put down gravel is soft.  That footprint is three inches deep.


Remember the ice patch from above?  It is all but gone.


I decided to go take a tour of my property, to see how much snow was left, and there wasn't much.  Less than 5%.  The spots where there is no sun and protection from the wind are the only spots there is snow outside of the banks.
The creek further back.


The woods at the back edge.


Even my rock ledge has been cleared of ice.




There is still some snow kicking around in the woods though. 


After sitting on the charger, I decided to give the mower one more kick before saying "I will deal with it in the spring.  It actually started this time.  The dry gas did its job.


With that success, I tried the push mower again.  Still no go on that front.

Post holiday update. Unfortunate resemblance to last winter.

I am finally back from the holidays and weddings.  Merry Christmas to all, Happy New Year, Congrats to Mike and Sarah.

For Christmas I got a battery charger (I was tired of jumping whichever vehicle I wasn't actively driving), and a new toaster oven.  I had two objectives for this weekend: testing the new toaster oven and unburying the car.  

The first part went well.  The toaster is the perfect size for the pizza crusts I normally use.

I will have to figure out something on the counter end.  It and the Foreman don't really fit together side by side.

It looks odd when it is running.  It is an infrared toaster oven, it isn't just a heating element.  This allows it to bake with no pre-heat time.  There are things that cook differently like this, which I will be finding out as they come.  I started with a mexican pizza, using queso blanco for the sauce and with some spicy ranchero sauce on top of the mexican cheese and taco chicken.

The heating is actually invisible, the light inside the toaster oven toggles along with the heating element so you don't do something foolish.  

12 minutes, with no preheating and the pizza was done.  When it is heaped this high, this would actually take 15 minutes in the oven.

Since aluminum reflects a lot of the infrared spectrum, the pan can be grabbed without oven mitts about a minute after opening.  

The next test was chicken tenders and fries.  I haven't made french fries since the bag I bought when I first got the oven hooked up because it immediately meant 45 minutes for a meal.  the two cooked roughly the same amount (the chicken was 450 for 11-13 minutes, the fries 400 for 19-22 or vice versa).  I just put the whole thing in for 19 minutes at 400, and everything came out nice and crisp.  Normally I make chicken tenders in the microwave.  They take 4 minutes that way, but are normally disappointingly mushy, this might change that.

I have used this model before at one of the airbnb I stayed at, so I already know it toasts really good.  All in all, I would consider this a success.  

A little snow update before getting to the car.  Earlier in the week we got a half inch of ice, then a couple of inches of snow.  Then more freezing rain and ice, and then more snow.  The snowblower fired up immediately upon my return, despite not running before I left in December.  This weekend we got rain followed by a little snow after it froze.  Which was annoying because I couldn't scrape the ice off my steps.  

 

A couple of the places where the water normally runs the rain was enough to get all the way through.

Most of the driveway however is straight ice now.  This spot down at the bottom is probably 3-4 inches thick.  

Now to get to the car.  It is cleaned off.  It really didn't want to, but it did start without the battery charger (good insurance).

The car however is stuck.  The rain melted things down and the water ran under the car around the tires and built up ice around them.  I tried just dropping the hammer and pushed it until the tires started smoking but it still won't move more than a quarter inch.  Ugh.

This is unfortunately exactly how last winter went.  It snowed, the car got put at the bottom of the hill because the truck became the primary driver, and then it rained and then everything froze, which is exactly how the car got stuck last year.  At this point I will have to find a way to pull it (when I can't get the truck in front of it really), jack it up and put boards under it to get it out, or wait for a true thaw.  Ugh.  Also like last year, I have gone through a ton of salt because there has been more ice than snow.  Even where I am in the higher elevations.  I have already gone through half a thing of calcium chloride, and since I don't want to leave the car until spring like I did last year, I might use the rest of that container trying to get the car out.  

There won't be too many updates during the weeks anymore until spring, but one last thing I want to do is point and laugh at the Patriots for losing to Ryan Tannehill and the Titans yet again.  That helps ease the way that the Bills lost. :)

Lots of small updates.

I haven't posted in forever, so I figured I would give a rundown of the last couple of weeks.  A lot of was dealing with snow.  I wasn't prepared for that much snow on the way back from Thanksgiving.

The house slid off quite well, as was the norm.  The polycarb sheds snow better than metal. This was taken a day and a half after the drive home. 


All over the previously cleared stairs of course.


I didn't get the whole driveway cleared for a week.  Just a very narrow bit to get up.  Turned out my head lamp was broken, so I was just doing a little bit before work every morning.  I didn't finish it until the following weekend.  The next day was all rain.  We got about an inch according to the weather.  It didn't melt everything off though. 


Right after the rain we got more snow (that was supposed to be rain).  After clearing this, I have now gone through approximately 15 shear pins already this year.


I did get the car out too.  I still need to finish cleaning it out so I can sell it. 


A bunch of small things since then: I got my HSA card finally so I can go get new glasses.  I discovered that I am out of checks.  I need to run to the bank tonight and tomorrow to get enough cash out to pay the septic loan this month since the new checks won't arrive before that bill is due.  I have gotten all my Christmas stuff done.  I ended up with another shaker from the Yankee swap at work (that matches my existing shakers), and the Bascom box (which I will bring down at Christmas) at the friends one. 


I even got myself a gift of a new game.  Everything works despite UPS leaving it out in the rain and ice all day.


We have been continually getting rain, so everything is clear now.  I also apparently need to do more turkey hunting. 


I have also noticed a problem with the heat pump.  When it goes from 50 and raining to cold, stuff freezes on the fan and makes a real racket.  It clicks when it runs, and sounds like it didn't survive percussion maintenance when it starts.  Fortunately it works despite the noise, but it has happened twice already this season, and both times it prevented me from getting a good night's sleep.  This video was taken at 3AM, thus being groggy. 

Unfortunately time is getting short now before leaving for KY for Christmas and I have a bunch of stuff to do tonight before it snows (we are supposed to get 4-6 late night).  I will probably take Thursday off since I worked a Dad week last week, and maybe leave early on Wednesday (work remotely for the morning and that is it) so I have time to get everything done before I leave.

29 hour nightmare drive.

So I was working with outdated information when I left on Saturday.  Originally the storm wasn't supposed to move into the northeast until late Sunday.  The plan was to leave Saturday night, wake up early on Sunday morning and be home early afternoon before the storm arrived.  That didn't happen.

The trip started off according to plan.  I got to Maryland around 1:30 AM and snoozed for a few hours and got up around 4 to 430 AM.  That was the last thing that went right.  It was clear when I got on US 220 (the road that goes between I99 and I68) that there was unexpected precipitation.  I was fortunate that I got into PA on 99 before things got worse.  The whole winter storm was pretty much ice in PA, and there were cars off the road or accidents every quarter mile.  I ended up averaging I would guess around 15mph across all of PA (it took 10-11 hours) because of crappy roads and accidents.  This was a common sight.


As was this.  He came from a fire truck at another accident a few hundred feet down the road (you can see all the cars were still single file).  There weren't enough first response vehicles available for all the accidents.  Most common was nobody available though.


At one point I stopped for a break.  The ice was quite thick.  My truck doesn't have LED bulbs, so thankfully the lights didn't ice up (more important later in the trip).  It wasn't quite that thick in this picture (this was around a quarter inch), but when I stopped after getting off the highway in VT, the ice on the front of the truck was almost an inch thick.  The hood (better representative of the precipitation) was at around 3/8" to at most 1/2"


After that I hit NY, which historically has been well plowed so I figured I would make up time there.  Ha.  In retrospect, NY had the best roads for the rest of the trip, but at the time I was extremely disappointed.  I87 was only moving around 40mph.  I90 towards MA wasn't cleared at all.

The Mass Pike was a trainwreck.   There is a long hill on I90 that is a couple of miles long.  There were a couple dozen cars that were sitting on the hill (going the opposite direction) that didn't make it.  Thankfully I was going down.  The Mass Pike was the beginning of "I don't know where the road, but thankfully I can still feel rumble strips when I get to the edge".
I took a video, but apparently the blogger website is broken and won't upload it.

As I approached I91, I figured it couldn't get worse.  I was wrong.  Parts of I91 were plowed, causing long traffic jams since MA apparently plows with the rigs side by side, and they don't actually drop the plow to the pavement, they left an inch plus on the road (I was literally directly behind them).  Worst of all is that they plow at 12mph.  Slower than just idling in my truck.  The spots that I wasn't behind plowtrucks were completely untouched.  Another interesting tidbit about MA is that they apparently plow their Scenic View lots before they plow their interstates.  Several of those had been cleared.

Then came VT.  VT has always been known for poor plowing, and they lived up to their billing.  At this point, there was around 8-12 inches on the interstate.  I had to drive the rest of the way with 4WD engaged.  When I entered VT there was a long line of traffic from the 12mph trucks in MA.  By exit 1, most of the line was gone.  By exit 2, there were only a couple of us still trying.  In an amusing anecdote, someone in a Honda Fit tried to get on the interstate at exit 2, which dumps you out on a hill.  They only made it off the acceleration ramp far enough to slide off the other side.  They made it literally maybe 500 feet.  I was the only vehicle that made it up the hill, and I am guessing that is only because I hit the base at almost 50mph, which is insane when you consider the road conditions and the fact that I could only see about 20 feet.  Something else that occurred to me as I crested the hill (going around 20 mph) is that I don't have a working flashlight or flares or anything in the truck, so if I hadn't made it there is no way to make the truck visible to plows.  I only saw one plow truck in VT going the other direction.

NH was bad, but after VT it was a breath of fresh air.  Route 9 to Keene had been plowed at least once and only had ~4-6" on it.  Hubbard and South road hadn't been touched, but that was actually a blessing in disguise since there was no bank at the end.


We had around a foot, maybe a touch less when I got home, so the bank would have hit the underside of the truck.


All in all, the return trip took 29 hours.  I left around 7PM on Saturday, and got home around midnight.  I slept for 3 hours in MD, and another hour to maybe an hour and a half in PA, so I spent literally over 24 hours on the road.  All things considered, while I am sick of sitting in the truck, I think it will suffice from a comfort perspective if I get a couple of cushions.

When I got up this morning we had around 16", and it was still coming down.  We got 2" while I snowblowed enough to get out.  As expected the bank at the end of the driveway was taller than the snowblower.  Another frustrating thing is that even with all the gravel I put down this year, I am still breaking shear pins at a breakneck pace.  I went through 6 of them this morning.  It is much easier to clear though without the ruts.

We were supposed to get 2-4 during the day and another 4-6 tonight so I will probably not bother with the driveway tonight.

More indoor stuff

I got some more interior stuff done Tuesday night.  The first thing I did was put a little bit more foam around the door.  Unfortunately the foam I got was too thick but I still got a layer in the corner, which was the really bad part.


I also got the side of the cabinet attached last night.  The glue didn't work worth a damn though, so we shall see how well this worked.


I also got the support for the shelf above the fridge installed.  I need to clean off the top of the fridge before I attach the shelf though.  Too much booze in the way.


Also, just as a reminder to me, I need to get my truck undercoated.  If I remember correctly, Tucker's is the guy that did the welding on my camper frame.  The work was fine, but he took forever to get it done.



I also started car searching in earnest last night.  I started at the Honda dealer.  The Accord doesn't look like it will meet my comfort demands.  I also stopped at the Nissan dealer.  There was still a sales guy there at 8 so I got to take one aroudn the parking lot.  While they have fixed a lot of my gripes and it has a lot of the niceties (remote starter, its actually an AWD, etc), it is narrower on the inside than the Geo.  Next up I stopped at Ford, who doesn't even stock Ford cars anymore (Ford is getting out of the car business though).  Next up was Hyundai.  Disappointingly they also only had one Sonata on the lot.  It had the same appearance as the others (large center console, steering wheel in the dash) but the car was locked.  I made an interesting observation there though, the Elantra (their compact) honestly looked like it was more comfortable.  The seat appeared to be the same as the Sonata, but because the car was smaller the console was very small.  Last up I checked Mazda.  Unlike the others, they had a whopping 2 mid-size cars on the lot.  The Mazda 6 actually looked like a decent car.  It had a big console (just like everything else) but the steering wheel looked right and all that.  I didn't bother to look at a Chevy (they have already-broken-down-Yugo rated reliability).  I couldn't remember where the Kia dealer was either. 

So that was disappointing.  Something that popped into my head as I was chatting with Mike though was why not just sell the car and drive my truck full time?  I don't really need two vehicles.  The benefit of the car is comfort, the car will never pay for itself based on superior gas mileage.  I calculated out that at 33mpg (most of the cars I looked at don't quite get that), I am looking at ~1200 in gas every year (I drive around 15k miles).  If I do that same driving in my truck (average of 15mpg) it runs me around 2500.  The car will take over 17 years to pay for itself (assuming a 23k car, which is among the cheapest I found.  The added wear and tear on the truck isn't really a negative (considering how much I love the design of the truck) and if I were a betting man I would guess the truck rots away before it breaks down at this point anyways; it is already 9 years old, has never been undercoated, and has less than 100k on it.  That allows me to redirect the 8-9k I have saved for a down payment to something like the septic loan or my mortgage, plus whatever I get for selling the car.   

I went up to the Honda dealer today at lunch and sat in one of their show models, and it wasn't as bad as it looked.  They do have telescoping steering wheel (their website doesn't actually list it) and was wider than it looked, with one fatal exception: they added an additional cutout thing that goes directly into my kneecap for the start button.  Remembering the Hyundai experience from last night, I also sat in a Civic.  It was smaller, but more comfortable than the Accord.  The model on the floor though was a Sport Coupe though, so I would have to see if a regular Civic is the same way.  I want to do more research on it too.  I plan on visiting the Hyundai dealer this afternoon, and the Kia dealer (I want to look up their models first though)

Winter is here.

The LAN party was last weekend, which was a lot of fun.  I slept outside for it (I snore a lot), but it was kind of chilly.  The first night, it was around 12 degrees (according to my phone anyways), and when I woke up I was cold.  I was planning on sleeping outside this weekend down at Krass for the friendsgiving, so I might want to up the gear I bring a bit.  I was not so smiley when I woke up.


With the cargo netting on the bed holding quite well (I added hooks to it to allow to me to close it up better) I finished cleaning off the broken cart that was by the door, so my chair is now inside.  The space was tighter than I expected.  Eventually the table will be attached to the side of the pantry as well in this spot.


It was quite pretty out last night with the moon illuminating the snow.  I tried to take some pictures of the snow with my phone, but it turns out my phone has some weird lights it uses, I guess for focusing?  I didn't think those were normally visible though, I always assumed they were either ultrasonic or infrared. 


I grabbed another picture this morning.  There isn't quite as much as there was yesterday (yesterday the ground was solid white).  The snow has survived a couple of days now, but I don't think it will make the week. 


I also went to Bob's Garage for fixing the Nissan.  They are actually less than a mile from my old apartment; I never went there because frankly the place looks really sketchy, but Greg gave him a good recommendation.  I stopped in at lunch yesterday and set him up to tow the Nissan in and fix it.  I got it back today, and I have to say that I will definitely be going back.  The whole repair was only 407 dollars.  Of that, the towing was 100 (which is a fairly standard rate), and 220 for the part (which is pretty average for a mass air flow sensor).  The service was prompt; I went over at lunch on Tuesday, and he had the car on the lift and knew what was wrong by the end of the day and had ordered the part.  Most importantly though, he did what Dube's and Nissan of Keene had been failing at for a few years now: the check engine light is off and the car is actually fixed.  On the way back today the car is running better than it has in quite a long time, though the octane booster and ethanol fixer stuff I put in the tank trying to start it might have something to do with that.  I will be taking the car the next few days and probably this weekend to NYC, so I will evaluate whether a new car is still a necessity before Thanksgiving or not.  If the finances work out, I still intend to buy a new one before Christmas. 

Indoor projects.

I started working on a few indoor projects this week.  The first of which was making the panel in front of the sink open and shut so I can eventually hang a basket on it.  One of the hinges is a little crooked, but it is installed and opens and closes, and the spring to hold it closed it installed.




I also got some rails cut for more shelving.  I went to install it and realized that I never installed the side panels for the cabinets, and didn't have any construction adhesive to do so last night.  I stopped by Home Depot at lunch and grabbed some liquid nails which ought to do the trick. 


I also dry fitted the vent extension.  Every once in a while when the wind is blowing the right way, I can still smell sewage in the house, so this ought to take my wall vent and exhaust it above the roof like a normal vent would.  For some reason I bought two couplers and not two elbows, but I got the last elbow during today's Home Depot run.


I will also find out this evening if the cargo net worked.  So far so good.  It is stretching more than I would have liked, but nothing fell out yet except the open box of tissues.  When I put the bed up tonight I will know for sure.


My car is confirmed dead.  I tried putting some dry gas and stuff in it to see of it was maybe just water in the gas, but it still wouldn't start, so I need to get it on a dolly and get it to a repair shop.  It stinks having to spend several hundred dollars just to trade it in, but I don't feel like dropping the fuel tank and stuff in my driveway.  Since the car has so many electrical systems, I can't tell if the fuel pump starts when you turn the ignition on, but the fuel pump is my assumption at this point.

I am going to the LAN this weekend, so no work will be accomplished.

The cold finally won.

As noted, the weather has been chilly the last several days, and I found the house getting steadily colder and colder, and yesterday it never breached 55 inside, so I finally caved and turned on the heat.  It smelled terrible at first but but eventually cleaned itself out without lighting anything on fire.


I also got the cargo net installed.  We shall see how well this works.  It is another storage mechanism I decided to try.


I got my tax bill the other day as well and something astonishing happened: my property taxes went down.  They went down a lot.  My tax rate went from 33 per thousand down to 22. 

Chilly weekend

Yesterday was chilly.  I did get some work done on the house though.  I went and picked up Greg's ladder in the morning, and got the window in the front cut out.  I got the window itself caulked back in as well.  I got the 1x4 cut for the top and bottom.  Two problems arose though: the bottom board needs to be thinner, it isn't below the drain for the window sill in the window, and because of the cold the caulk took hours to cure.  So I didn't get them installed.  Tim has a planar and a jig for his table saw to make boards thinner, so I will be headed over there this afternoon.  Kind of a bummer, since I was hoping to complete it this weekend, but oh well.


I also stopped by the quarry to pick up the gravel to finish the drainage ditch, but apparently they are off their summer hours and weren't open.  Looking at the drainage ditch though, I am still thinking about running the pipe all the way down to the creek though.  We have gotten a lot of rain the past week, and the part I never filled in was full.  There was still active draining going on too.  I could see water draining out of the pipe and running in.


So instead I got some other winterization stuff done.  I got the hose taken off and drained.  I also got the spicket drained.


The hose itself is now drained (it is easy when you live on a hill) and wound up.