Chain Gang

Looking South East at 8 am.

I managed to get Tom's skidsteer stuck in my driveway day before yesterday. Mine was out of commission with some intermittant problems. Yesterday morning we hooked the Drott skid shovel up to it and pulled it out. Hydraulic fluid was squirting out of a hose connection so I drove it the 7 K back to Tom's place. There we discovered the problem wasn't a broken hose but a leaky one. Easily fixed with a couple of twists of a wrench.

Lesson learned: Look at things without assuming.

My niece and her boyfriend, Brian, dropped by. Brian is a mechanic and he brought a tool case of automotive electrical connectors and wire. We cleaned up some of the wiring, dried out the distributor, taking care to ensure all the spark plug connectors were tight and Voila! I'm back in the snow removal business. We also put on a new set of heavy duty, spiked, equipment chains on the back tires. Huge difference. Once again the old adage: " you get what you pay for.." comes into play. I had some light weight chains on, but they were just modified truck chains. Just not up to snuff. The grab the ice and snow. I managed to plow out to Grandma's, which because of drifting I had given up on. And every other place around here that looked like it had snow in the wrong place.

Today Tom is coming up to help me grease the drivetrain and I will finish pushing the snow back at the start of the driveway. It is hovering around zero C. Weirdly warm after the -33 stuff. Rain is even predicted in a couple of days. This morning we had an inch of fresh snow and temps of -0.5. What's up with that.

With any kind of luck I might manage to make it back into the Shop project.

This morning were both on the kitchen table working on our laptops. I am blogging and installing Windows 7 on a virtual partition on my Mac. And dreaming about gardening. Can't be too far off right?