Relative Something

I fought long and hard against the snow that filled our driveway yesterday, and only just barely broke through in the end with a path that will allow us out in an emergency. That limited progress is despite the fact that I ended up getting help from two different neighbors!

I spent the morning clearing the upper portion of our driveway between the shop garage and the house. I was experimenting with different ways to scoop a bucket full and dump it to the side. It gets to be quite a trick when you are in the narrow lane of the driveway, away from open access points like the opening in front of the shop garage. At first it seemed rather easy, but it quickly became difficult when restrained by the edges of the driveway.

If I venture too far to the side, one of the front wheels will drop down off the pavement and then my rear tires just spin in place, chains and all, trying to pull back out. Then I need to rotate the bucket fully back, and lower it to the ground to use as a lever to push the tractor backwards, by rotating the bucket forward, out and away from me. That works most of the time, but it is an inexact science in the hands of a novice.

I wrestled with trying to figure out when speed was an advantage, mostly discovering when it was not. I struggled to figure out where the balance point was for a bucket filled to overflowing with snow, hoping to use the weight to my advantage, not against, in getting enough traction on the icy surface.

After a lunch break, I headed out to try my techniques on the rest of the driveway. Unfortunately, most of the rest of the driveway that remained to be cleared was far from flat. On the hills, I can usually move forward going down, but the going up part becomes an epic battle of spinning wheels. My progress was painfully slow. As big a scoop as I was using, and as full as I could possibly get it each time, it still felt like trying to shovel using a dinner spoon.

I tried speeding up, but then I sacrificed torque and would find myself getting stuck on the ice more often. After way too many iterations of back and forth, fatigue becomes a factor. My left foot and leg get tired working the clutch. One time, I forgot to shift into reverse, and accidentally went forward when I didn’t mean to, dropping my front wheel over the edge and forcing the dreaded levering the loader to push myself out.

I kept at it with barely a pause for a drink of water, and crested the last hill as the sun was setting. To my surprise, I discovered that one of my neighbors had plowed our driveway from the road, half way up the first hill. I was so thrilled at that I lost track of the bucket full of snow, leaving my hand on the lever so it lifted to the point of dumping part of its load back on the hood of the tractor and me.

With the difficult part down by the road already taken care of, I suddenly felt inspired to try to get the remaining section done before quitting for the day. Too bad it was some of the deepest snow yet and I was now headed downhill, making it increasingly difficult to back up with a bucketful of snow. Within sight of the finish line, I got myself miserably stuck. That is when my other neighbor showed up with his tractor and began digging toward me from the downhill side, while I practiced my loader-lever maneuvers to push myself back uphill. After a few scoopfuls by him, I was able to bomb my way forward and break through.

It was finally dark, and I was more than ready to be done for one day, so I left just a single narrow opening on that slope and made my way back to the garage. The final cleanup remains, either for today, or tomorrow, depending on when I feel up for the fight. This is more snow than I have ever tried to move in my entire life.

If this kind of storm happens again, I’m gonna be looking for one of those snow machines with tracks that the ski hills use. Either that or I need to look into flattening the driveway by cutting down the hills and filling in the valleys.

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