I was a bit depressed when I went to bed on Weds night. During the day I discovered a small puddle of water across our bathroom floor, and after an investigation found that the source was our hot water heater. Luckily, the local hardware store had a new one in stock, but it fell to me to install it and I hate plumbing and was dreading waking up on Thursday to do the chore.
As it happened, I didn’t have to install the new hot water tank, because a new priority established itself overnight--SNOW, lots of snow. There was 15 inches (38cm) of snow covering everything. Since We were trapped in our house until the driveway was cleared, I spent the whole day shoveling our 80m ( 260 ft) drive. It was a horrendous job. I quickly ran out of places to pile the snow that I had taken from the driveway. By the time I finally had the driveway cleared, another 4 inches (10cm) had fallen on what I had already cleared, and the snow just kept on falling.
The huge snowfall was not the only problem of the day. At 7:30 that morning, our power went out and remained off all day and into the night. We couldn’t get information about the weather, since internet, radio, and television didn’t work. When I finally got the drive cleared, we drove into town to eat supper at a restaurant since our electric stove didn’t work without power. (Luckily, since we have wood heat and gravity feed water, we still had both of those vital things, even without electricity.)
We found McBride full of snow-covered transport trucks, idling and parked outside the restaurant because the heavy snow had pretty much made travel to Prince George or Jasper on Hwy. 16 impossible. We were told that the highway east to Jasper was down to a single lane. We sat in the restaurant, ate our food and watched through the windows as it continued to snow.
When we did get back home, we threw more wood in the stove and nestled in our dark candlelit living room, reading until boredom set in, then decided the power wasn’t going to come back on, and so we went to bed.
The next morning when I got up, I was happily surprised that our electricity had been re-established overnight, but we still didn’t have internet or radio. When I looked outside I was astounded to discover that another 15 inches of snow had fallen during the night, replacing all that snow I had shoveled from the driveway, with so much effort, the day before.
It was much colder out, -15C (5F) and it got colder as the day progressed, but the driveway had to be cleared, so bundled myself up in all my cold weather clothing, headed out and began shoveling (actually I use a big scoop which allows me to get a big bite of snow then move it away to pile.)
It was a much more difficult job than it was yesterday, because I already had high piles of snow on each side of the driveway and I now had to push the snow even higher to get rid of it. Despite hours of shoveling and pushing snow, I didn’t get the whole driveway cleared, but did get enough off to get the truck out. We drove into town because I had to use the internet in the library to send 2 cartoons off to the newspapers. McBride was having electrical problems to. Some places had it others didn’t. Luckily the library did and I was able to send my cartoons off.
Around 4:00 in the afternoon, when we finally got back home, our internet was finally back on and I used the opportunity to finally break down and order myself a “snowthrower” (what they now call snowblower machines). Joan has been urging me to get one for years, but I have resisted in my pigheaded way, preferring to shovel, but I’m not getting any younger and after this current snowstorm put 30 inches (76 cm) of the white stuff on the ground in a little more than 24 hours, I decided I can’t really keep up. Hopefully, the machine will arrive before another big storm hits.
Today we have both power and internet (that’s why you are getting this blog), but the news isn’t all good; the temperatures have plummeted. This morning the temperature was -33C (-27F) and I am not very eager to get outside to finish shoveling the driveway.
You can see my paintings at: www.davidmarchant.ca
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