- Joined
- Sep 17, 2013
- Messages
- 4,295
- Reaction score
- 9,472
Well nuts, it's 3 F, a five day blizzard and today is as bad a white out as I have ever seen (I have seen a lot of other ones as bad but never worse). Thirty miles of 20 MPH driving to get my snowblower to the repair shop. I was blowing snow and the the whole mechanical one and two stage auger system and shear pin crapped out. What the? I looked and cleared out the snow. I thought it might be a piece of rug or a mat that blew into my yard, but no, can you believe I got a mid sized steel vice jammed into my augers. It was almost ejected by the second stage auger but ended out wedged ingeniously between the first stage, second stage and the pickup. Jammed tighter than a stuck seat post. My neighbor said that I can really mess anything up (he used a more descriptive euphemism). The old vice was used as a weight that held down the sheet metal cover on my fire pit and prevented the howling north winds from across our lake from making a kite out of it. I guess the early snow didn't give me a chance to pick up my yard, at least that is the excuse I told my wife. She claims I was so enamored with my bicycle fetish that I didn't pay attention to my obligations. Snow up to your crotch and only shovels and brooms to clean it up as there is a big back log for snowblower repairs at the shop. I tried giant crowbars and breaker bars to get the vice loose but no dice. I hate working on anything mechanical that isn't a bicycle or motorcycle, especially when it is 3 F. But I had a good day. Instead of passing Fall-a-part I stopped to look at their bikes. They had a Cranbrook but it had a potato chipped front wheel. Weird, it has 12 or 10 gauge spokes and has chrome components instead of black powder. I asked if they had another, they said yes but couldn't find it. I was ready to waltz and the sales lady said would you buy it at a discount? Ha, $78 out the door including tax. All the parts will be use on a 1950s girls bike for a friend. I'll use everything except the frame and fork off the Cranbrook. You can't buy the parts that cheap. I'll have to spread the old fork a little. I was not looking to buy a bike but this will make a crusty cruiser usable again. I'll have to rattle can it. Plus I have another bike frame to add to my fence. My wife was thrilled with he white out and dangerous driving. She thinks that it is thrilling and cheap. No need to take up an expensive death wish sport like sky diving or downhill bike racing, we can just go out for a highway cruise. Honest, that is what she said. I took her out for dinner. It was really bad, icy, windy, 10 foot visibility, no plowing, no sanding, 4 wheel drive, and a train line of impatient crazy yoopers chomping at the bit to defy death enough to pass. I have been accused of being nuts but I wouldn't try to pass a line of 5 (or 100) cars in front of me when I could only see 10 feet. It was so bad that I couldn't see trucks passing me until they were beside my review mirror. I was tempted to pass but didn't feel like gambling. Remember that we only have two lane roads up here. I guess I'm getting old. It was nuts. There was a multi county bus in the ditch and two jack knifed semi trailer trucks that squashed a car along the way. Cars are all plastic now, or at lest that is all is saw is plastic pieces tossed in the road and in the woods. The car may have been in the woods or under one of the trucks. No emergency vehicles were there yet. To stop to help would have been certain death with no visibility. No cell service either. BAD.
Last edited:
(the same goes in most cases with measurments)
