As apartment managers, my wife and I are responsible for everything with the building. We take care of repairs, maintenance, cleaning, collecting rent, etc. If there is a problem we can’t take care of ourselves, then we hire someone else to do it. We live on site, so as you can imagine, we spend quite a bit of time tending to the various demands of the building, tenants, and property.
One thing that I particularly dread is winter snow removal. You may or may not be familiar with winters in Alaska, but we can get some serious amounts of snow here. So much snow, in fact, that the state often has to bring out huge equipment to pick up and haul the snow off the streets.
So with that bit of background, let me tell you about an experience I had one cold winters night…
It was a particularly nasty day with it snowing on and off throughout the day. I had been doing my best to keep the porches and paths to the doors of the building clear, but I was waiting for the snow to let up before I did the major stuff like clearing the sidewalks of snow. This can be problematic if the snowplows decide to shove all the road snow onto my sidewalk because the snow freezes into these big ice chunk boulders that can be hard to move if you let them sit too long.
Anyway, it was starting to get late, so I decided to get out there and go to it. The snow blower I use is pretty good, but its getting old and a bit worn out. Its kind of a funny little thing. It has little tank treads to pull it along in the snow (you still have to push the thing a lot of the time) and you control the steering by deactivating either side of the tread belts. The pull start on it broke and the only way I can get it started is to plug it into an extension cord and use the electronic ignition.
As normal, I got it running and started heading to the walks. The snow plows had piled the road snow all over the walks, so I spent some time kicking the boulders over from the walk to the area between the sidewalk and the street. Once I got them all moved over I started using the snow-blower to move the snow into the snow berm (The mound of snow that often builds up on the side of the road in the winter)
Everything was going just fine. I had removed most of the snow and had worked my way to the opposite end of our building when suddenly the snow-blower came to an abrupt halt and the engine killed. Now this was unusual, typically the engine will only bog down and sputter if it hits a ice bolder or something. Usually you can just pull the thing back and then drive it back in if you hit a particularly dense patch of snow, but this was different… it was an instant kill of the engine.
I trudged through the snow to the front of the snow-blower to see what was going on and I could see… … NOTHING! Just white snow. (granted, it was dark outside… but its practically always dark outside here in the winter) So I start digging my gloved hands through the snow to see if there was something in the augers. I didin’t find any of our neighbors pets mangled in there or anything. It was just a bunch of white snow. Or so I thought.
I dug all the snow out of the augers and tilted the snow-blower back so I could get the street light to shine into the opening and what did I see? A full sized white bathroom towel twisted, tangled, and wrapped all up in the augers.
No problem right? I’ll just unwrap the towel. (AND WHAT IN THE WORLD IS THIS STUPID TOWEL DOING IN THE MIDDLE OF MY SIDEWALK ANYWAY!???) Well, it turns out the towel had become damp from the mist of the snow and had effectively frozen itself solid to the metal of the augers and I could not pry it off at all.
So, then I pulled out my trusty Leatherman Wave (if you don’t have one of these, you should get one!) and took out the serrated edge knife and started sawing into the frozen towel. I finally cut through the whole thing and started ripping, cutting, and prying off pieces of the towel until I finally had it all cleared. It took me about an hour to get it all out of there.
Nice! Now I can finish up the snow removal… oh wait. That’s right, the pull starter is broken. The snow-blower doesn’t have a “neutral gear” so those wonderful little tank treads were not cooperating with me as I drug the snow-blower back to the extension cord so I could start it up.
I eventually got back to the cord, got the machine started, and finished the job. I never did figure out why a stupid towel was just laying in the snow there that day either.
I’ve had many things happen when I’m trying to remove snow. Maybe I’ll share more of them in the future.
Have you guys ever had any bad experiences removing snow? Do you even get snow where you live? How much? Let us know by clicking the comment button below and let us know your thoughts!
Yeah I’ve had a bad experience removing snow… It’s called “Winter!” This post is a bad omen, dude. You’re just asking for an early winter, aren’t ya? Seriously though… This one time I was knocking huge icicles from the roof of my place that I rented in Spenard years ago, and I was continually whacking at this one multi-speared cluster of ice that wouldn’t budge. As soon as I dropped the shovel to the walkway, to take a breather, the icy bohemeth ganked me right on the head and shoulder. I quickly looked around in pain to see if anyone was watching. It didn’t appear so, but you just know someone staring out their living room window probably had their best laugh of the winter that year. I am lucky that I wasn’t stupid enough to stand directly under the huge block, or I wouldn’t be writing this today.
Stupid towel! Nothing like cold weather to make working outside being as miserable as possible…uck!
So when we going to get some more exciting stories!?
Oh wait. Yes, I have. I’m sorry, but I just don’t have it in me right now to type it all out again. Besides, it was just ramblings anyway. You didn’t want to hear me go on and on about this, right?
We used to get a lot of snow in Britain but now we hardly get any. Good old global warming.
Yeh, snow removal is not fun!! One bad thing that happen one winter when we got 3 feet of snow dumped on us, was that my Husband lost his wedding ring somewhere in all that snow. He rented a metal detector, but didn’t know where to begin to look for it. He never found it. I wonder what became of it.
Thank you for sharing!
Snow season is getting closer by the day and you need to prepare yourself for removing all of that lovely snow. Get rid of your shovel this winter and try something new, you will be glad you did. Oh, and your back will thank you too. Check out the Dakota SnoBlade at my blog. This will be my third winter with mine and I will never look at a shovel the same way again. Make short work of snow removal and get back inside the house to stay warm.
Nice pictures! Adds a lot to your posts!
[...] been getting a lot of visitors looking at our picture of the big snow truck picture on our “Snow removal in Alaska… always a wonderful experience!” article. So, I thought you all might like to see a video of one of these beasts in action! [...]
I found your blog by accident but am glad I did
Be careful! You should NEVER put your hand inside a snowblower that has stopped/become clogged. Even with the engine off, the blades can recoil when something becomes dislodged and you can loose a finger or two! Seriously! Use the butt end of a broom or something but NEVER reach your hand in there. I worked in a hospital for a few years and every big snow day, the ER would process 4 or 5 people who’d lost fingers doing this very thing.
PS: You should consider applying for fundage from the Leatherman Wave company…They’re getting some great product placement from you!
We got dumped on, 12″+ of snow. My neighbor has a snow blower, I have a broken window, arghhhh. I am going to buy the biggest snow blower I can afford heh heh! Let it snow, let it snow , let it snow…..
Wow Jim, If I’m reading this right, it looks like your neighbors snow blower broke your window.
Did he know he did it? Has he done anything to fix it?
Its march 12 and we just got another 3 inches of snow here in Alaska… When will spring arrive!?
AMA – awesome story. Lived in AK for 6 years, sorta miss I was back. Erie, PA gets 30 inches more snow than Anchorage or Fairbanks, it’s an old city with numerous two lane roads, some of them called “state routes”. This year (my 3rd winter) they’re actually being proactive and doing some OK stuff, but the last two years, they’ve been really sloppy with everything.
As much snow as they get (the city’s only been here a coupla hundred years), they have nothing like the Overgrown Winter Salad Shooters that Anchorage and Fairbanks folks take for granted. Not that they would fit down these two lane footpaths.
Anyway, just wanted to let you know that I “borrowed” your picture to share with my brother and would like you to email me so I can give apropos to you. Thanks for reminding me of the state I miss!
Ha ha mike, now every time I see one of these big machines rolling down the street, I’m going to think of big salad shooters!
Thanks for visting and thanks for sharing your story with us. Always good to have Alaskans (former or current) commenting!