Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow

Think we're getting close to the two feet total for this particular storm. It doesn't matter. Our driveway will remain open.

Unfortunately, this winter is the last one where the Road Commission will plow private driveways. The fees they charge don't really cover the cost, and there are staffing issues -- when people retire, that position just stays empty. Fewer guys working means the amount of public road each plow operator has to cover keeps growing; doing driveways eats up too much time. End result? The Road Commission board members voted a few months ago to discontinue the driveway program after this winter.

So what are we going to do next year? We managed in the past without the Road Commission; we can do it again. The S.O. has a 4-wheel drive pickup with a plow rig, and if there's ever a storm that dumps so much snow the pickup can't deal with it, well, we do have snowshoes.

Alternatively, there is always The Guppy and a snowbird lifestyle. There are worse fates than spending the winters wandering around the southwest while avoiding snow.

Winter guano

A classic

Do we have snow?

After the latest 9 inches fell, the S.O. decided he'd better clear the roof on the Garden Shed (aka Tammi's Shack; the Younger Daughter built it when she was in junior high) after he noticed the rafters had a distinct bow. I'm not sure just how much we've got on the ground, but the snow was about 3 feet deep on that roof.

Summer is officially over

. . . at least up on the tundra. The 2011-2012 snowplowing bill for the driveway at the Retirement Bunker arrived today.

The photo is an old one. Here's a view in the summer of more or less that same stretch of driveway 30+ years later. Rewilding in action.

Ten years ago

I've been wandering down Nostalgia Lane this week, going through a stack of old 3.5 inch floppies ("legacy technology") and transferring the contents to CDs or DVDs.  My personal computer no longer includes that size drive, and it occurred to me that it wouldn't be long before I wouldn't have access to one though work either.  I had files going back to my grad school days on those floppies, so I decided to go through them and see if there was anything worth saving.

Turned out there was, and I just don't mean the 17 or so "back up" copies of the dissertation. I found copies of letters I wrote back in the '90s (and I'd like to thank my younger self for reminding me so vividly of why I don't miss teaching snot-nosed undergraduates all that much), personal photos taken in the early days of digital cameras, and other gems. 

The above photo (which the S.O. is going to be annoyed that I used before he could) was taken almost exactly ten years ago, in early winter of 1999.  I must have used the digital camera I had the use of during my brief tenure as the editor of a limited circulation monthly newspaper (a contract job that lasted, if memory serves me right, for four issues).  The camera was huge, not a whole lot different than trying to tote an oversized brick around, and used actual floppies, the 3.5 inch ones.  At its highest quality setting, a person was doing good to take more than 2 photos before running out of memory.  But it was great for desktop publishing -- straight from the camera to the computer with minimal hassle. 

We were living up on the tundra that year, trying to stay warm in our aging shoebox of a mobile home, while we both lurched from temporary job to temporary job.  The editing gig came along right about the time my unemployment checks were running out, so it was good timing even if it didn't last long.  It meant being able to avoid driving up to Houghton to re-register with the temporary employment pool at Michigan Tech (not that I ever minded any of the various temporary jobs I've held at Tech -- being the football coaches' temporary secretary for approximately six months was more fun than any office job should ever be) while keeping my fingers crossed I managed to find something more permanent.  Being unemployed in upper Michigan is one of those things that qualifies as a mixed blessing:  it sucks being broke, but it also means not having to be outside busting through snowdrifts before dawn.  Our road never got plowed before either I or the S.O. had to leave for work -- it's been the last one cleared for many, many years. 

Which is, of course, one of the reasons we owned a snowplow ourselves.  We pay Baraga County for driveway plowing every year (including this one, even though they got told they don't have to plow because no one's at the farm this winter) so we can stay on the list (once you're off the list, you can never get back on), but even with the county keeping the driveway open, when you live in an area that gets, on average, over 300 inches of snow per winter, it is good to have a personal plow, even if it is mounted on a piece of junk like that Jeepster.  The plow itself was not a particularly good one, if memory serves me right.  The S.O. didn't notice the missing roof much.  He kept himself warm with curses, either at the plow or the plow vehicle.

A year from now he'll be back at it, out there in the cold shoving snow around with a vehicle that looks like it should have gone to the crusher a couple years ago.  The major difference will be we'll be retired, no ties to the U.P. that would keep us there all winter.  I wonder how many plowing days it will take before he decides being a snowbird isn't such a bad idea after all?

Missing the cold

Believe it or not, I've been missing upper Michigan winters lately. I read DaveO's descriptions of his skiing adventures over at The Lake is the Boss, and I find myself waxing nostalgic for the days when I'd step outside, hear the snow crunch underfoot in the subzero temps, and feel my eyelashes start to feeze themselves together when I'd blink.

Of course, I'd probably change my mind really fast if we were actually up there in true snow country dealing with fun stuff like keeping the woodstove fed, trying to start the car at -20, and cursing the county because once again they didn't bother to plow our road.

The coldest winter I ever experienced was in the U.P. in 1993-94. Day after day of highs that never got above zero, lows that went down to Arctic levels, municipal water pipes that hadn't frozen in a hundred years froze solid for the first time ever. The S.O. and I were living in the Shoebox, a mobile home that had basically zero insulation in the walls, and trying to keep it warm with just a woodstove in the back porch (the structure that is now known as The Camp). The stove was homemade, a crudely welded box stove that was about as energy efficient as an open campfire, and went through firewood almost as fast as a wino going through bottles of Ripple. Even with the S.O. getting up in the middle of the night to throw another log on the fire, by the time I got up to get ready for work even the ashes would be stone cold.

There was many a morning when I'd crawl out of bed, check the thermometer, and see numbers in our bedroom registering just barely above freezing. I'd fire up the woodstove, turn on the coffee, hop in the shower, and right about the time I was dressed, done with breakfast, and ready to hit the road that damn stove would start putting out some heat. I'd go out, start the Scamp (or attempt to -- there were a fair number of -30 mornings when the only way that beast would crank would be to connect the battery charger and jump start it), and get going, pushing snow with the bumper because the roads hadn't been plowed yet (I'd usually meet the county grader coming up the main road 6 or 7 miles from our house), scraping frost off the inside of the windshield, watching it snow inside the car, and thinking dark thoughts about the folly of living in the middle of nowhere in the winter. Somewhere around Chassell (30 miles or so from home) the defrosters would finally start working, and, a few miles later as I pulled into the parking lot at the Michigan Tech Student Development Center, the windshield would be clear.

Periodically throughout the day I'd try to remember to go back out to the car, start it, let it run for awhile, all in the hope that when I got off work at 5 it would start again so I could head home. It usually did.

The screwiest part of that particular winter is that as far as I can remember our water pipes never froze. Or, if they did, the S.O. solved the problem fast enough that I don't remember it now. People living in town with municipal water had problems but we didn't. Michigan Tech opened the SDC locker rooms to the locals so they could shower (various neighborhoods in Houghton and Hancock were without water due to freezing, but Tech never lost its water). We had a shallow well with the supply line from the pumphouse to the Shoebox buried, at best, barely two feet down, and once it emerged from the dirt to go into the trailer there was several feet of pipe that was, to put it mildly, poorly insulated. A typical winter in the Shoebox usually featured the S.O. putting on coveralls and crawling under the house with a heat gun, cursing colorfully the entire time at least once, so it's odd I don't recall any from 93-94.