SNOW DAY!

I have lived in some snowy places, so you'd think that I would like the shitty white stuff, or at least be used to it. Most people don't realize that Denver has a pretty great winter climate. While we do get snow, its sprinkled in amongst 50 degree and sunny days.

I grew up near Chicago, so we'd always have 2-3 snow days each year. Those were fun because there was a great sledding hill less than a block from my house. All the neighborhood kids would get out there and have big snowball fights, build snow forts, and launch ourselves off jumps we built at the bottom of the hill.

Once I left home for college, I developed a deep hatred for snow. My freshman year of college I had to drive 6 hours home for Christmas in a blizzard, on a drive that would normally take only 2.5 hours. That sucked. I had a few fun times in the snow during college, but mostly it just meant being cold and wet going to and from the bars. It was fun getting drunk and playing football in the snow, as well as jumping from a 20 foot cement retaining wall into 10 feet high piles of snow (from where the plows had pushed all the snow it had cleared from a parking lot), but those times weren't as common as I'd have liked.

I developed a new perspective on snow from living in Syracuse, NY. Storms in Denver that are considered a lot of snow don't seem like anything to me anymore. My final winter in Syracuse the city was hit with 150 inches of snow, and my wife and I didn't think it was a bad winter. When 2-3 inches fall every night, with just a few 12-18 inch snowfalls interspersed in there, its a fairly manageable winter.

The worst I experienced was the first Valentine's Day my wife (then girlfriend) and I were together. That day Syracuse was hit with over 36 inches of snow in 24 hours. I had never experienced anything like it. The snow was just pouring down, and it shut the city down. And Syracuse knows how to handle snow. Syracuse University has closed twice in its history, once in the 70s when a big storm right before classes started back up after Spring Break made traveling back to town really dangerous for all the students, and that Valentine's Day in 2007. I was able to get around because I had a 4x4 Jeep Grand Cherokee, and it was damn lucky I did because otherwise my wife and I wouldn't have been able to spend the day together. The drive to her place was a fun one, I saw a ton of stuck cars, and just laughed at the all wheel drive small SUVs that were going nowhere. My apartment complex sat at the top of a hill, and both entrance drives were cluttered with about 20 cars each that just said fuck it and parked right there in the driveway. My Jeep drove through the snow like it wasn't even there. My wife's Eclipse on the other hand required me to push it across the street each night for a week due to alternate day street parking laws. It was 3 weeks before my wife's car could even be driven for more than just moving it to a new parking spot.

Now, I've picked up snowboarding, so I'm becoming okay with snow again. That said, Colorado isn't very good at caring for its roads, so even though there's way less snow out here, its a way bigger pain in the ass than in Syracuse.

 

Yep, good ol' Snowpocalypse. I remember I didn't get to leave college until the 26th and a bunch of flights got canceled as well, so me and my friends took the opportunity to walk around Georgetown. The place was fucking deserted - it looked like a ghost town. No cars on M Street is a strange sight indeed.

Now, it's coming down just enough to be annoying, and I have my first day of class tomorrow. Whoop de fuck.

 

How about getting 6" of snow during one day, then getting 2-3 inches of freezing rain that same night. Tens of thousands of people had no power for weeks. People outside the city didn't leave their homes except to visit neighbors for 4 days.

Craziest weather I've ever seen.

 

Alt Focus: Ohhh memories. I remember a particular day back when I was a junior in high school, and we had a snow day. And where I live, we had to get a dumb fucking amount of snow in order to cancel school (as in feet with a combination of wind & ice and some wild arctic bullshit). So this was rare.. and we took full advantage. On any note, I ran across the street to a buddy's house, had a few buddies and our girlfriends over and started drinking screw drivers around 8:30am. Not even an hour later all 10 or so of us are shit-housed with pizza pockets all over our faces ravin' to Benny Bennasi. Then came weed, boxes of Gushers, fruit snacks and snowball fights. I also saw my girlfriends friends tits. Hell of a day. I think we all passed out around 1pm.

Focus: Like Nett, I've got gigs of movies/games/books/music to keep myself occupied whenever it's real shitty out. But usually after a heavy snowfall, I'm out driving my truck, drifting corners & plowing through snow drifts while blasting me some devil music.

Lately in the morning, while I'm eating breakfast, I enjoy watching the ice fisherman out on the lake doing their thing, freezing their ass off just waiting for one of those motherfuckers to fall in.

Occasionally we'll get a few people together and sled behind a buddy's AWD Subaru. And FYI, 50mph on a sled feels like you're going 100+mph. Quite invigorating.

Snowboarding's also another big part of my Winter festivities. After 14 years, the feeling of shredding down a double black diamond on a sunny day with 2 ft+ of fresh powder never ever gets old.

Apart from all this, I'm getting pale and drinking a winter ale.

 

We're at 15 inches right now. My wife's corgi ran out in the snow and immediately submarined under it. Unfortunately, she found her way back to the house.

Tonka the Mastador puppy has no problems barreling through it, now that he's the size of an almost full grown lab.

New forecast says 19 to 24 inches. However, it also says heavy snow from now (9 a.m.) through the early afternoon, falling at 2-3 inches per hour. I think we'll hit at least 24 inches.

 

Leave it to Ken Block, DC, & Subaru to take it to the next next level.

Color me jealous.



Edit: We're at around 14" in my front yard with snow expected thru 7PM. Went out at 5AM and cleared a few driveways. Just went out again and you can barely tell I touched them.

 

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.mattracks.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.mattracks.com</a> if you want to get those tracks for your own personal vehicle. Only $26k for four tracks to fit an Expedition.

I just finished shoveling the deck, a path to my wife's goats and chickens so she can feed them (pussy goats wouldn't even make their own trail), and the inside of the pen.

My arms are fucking tired. Going to rest for a bit, then start on the sled run.

EDIT:

Check this shit out.

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.mattrackspowerboards.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.mattrackspowerboards.com/</a>

Here's where we were at an hour ago:

 

Thanks for putting the tracks idea in my head.

Just happened to come across these on Ebay.

<a class="postlink" href="http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/MATTRACKS-105-M1-97-06-Jeep-Wrangler-w-brackets-_W0QQcmdZViewItemQQfitsZMakeQ3aJeepQ7cSubmodelQ3aRubiconQQhashZitem3cb2fe4d85QQitemZ260701048197QQptZMotorsQ5fCarQ5fTruckQ5fPartsQ5fAccessories" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/MATTRACK ... ccessories</a>

Project Rubi might have hit a turn.

 

I want to get a mid 80s Suburban to throw a set of those on, along with one of the newer diesel engines. It would be unstoppable.

Especially for when the zombies come.

 

I want that car. I think it would make winter a whole lot more fun.

Also, it has Vermont plates. . . I need to find where they're keeping it.

 

How many fortnights to the hogshead is that?

 

That's an older video but the mountain looks like Stowe.


Days like today make me want to quit being a good neighbor. I absolutely hate when people leave their vehicles in the dead center of the driveway and then want me to come back and re-plow the driveway again when they move the car over. It would be one thing if I was charging them... but I'm not.

Also fucked up my tractor's snow thrower. Sucked up a nice big 3" round branch that the pooch must have dragged into the front yard. Pretty sure the warranty doesn't cover that.

All in all we ended up with 22" of snow here. At least it was the light powdery kind and not the heavy oatmeal stuff.

 

This is the first part of the snow tunnel I'm making for my kids. Why? Because snow tunnels fucking rule!

 

Where it turns right, is there enough snow beyond that to dig straight back and make a small room? I only had enough snow in my yard to do that once and it was awesome.

 

Yeah, that's the section I just built. Right now, it's a tunnel to another tunnel, but I'm going to fill up trash cans of snow and make a turret. There's about 15 feet beyond that to make another narrow tunnel.

 

Awesome. Those kids are gonna have a blast. Just in time for the weekend, too.

 

I should make you come over and help. This is a lot of work.

 

I'm currently a senior at the University of Wisconsin. Wanna know how many snow days WE'VE gotten since they started keeping records (I think back in the 1940s)? One. I'll repeat that. One snow day in the last 60-70 years at my school. This was last year. Why, you ask? Because we got something like 18 inches in one night. This was in the middle of December so, being in Wisconsin and what not, we'd already gotten an obnoxious amount of snow the week before. However, class was canceled the night before because we were projected to get something like 25 inches that night. A snow plow literally gave up on our street. As in there was a plow-shaped mound in the middle of our street directly in front of our house.

How did we spend our one and only snow day in college, you ask? By day drinking, of course. What else would you do? Study?! Fuck that.

 

This is one of those things where the end justifies the means. It might be a bitch to make, but it's really cool once it's done. If I was closer, and it wasn't totally weird to help someone I talk to online build their kids a sweet snow fort, I'd offer to help. I'm actually pissed that there aren't any people in my building doing this for their kids. There's the perfect spot directly next to my building.