A new year with lots of new snow. I was out there early blowing the driveway; my 3-stage snowblower doing a great job on the pile of snow. I mostly cleared the snow off David's and Jeffrey's cars as well. The snowplow came through by 9am, much to my surprise, and I shoveled the end of the driveway and headed to Mass in Britt for New Year's Day.
On the way back, I met up with David & Vanda & Kylie heading west on 522. We stopped and chatted for a minute. Lauren was supposed to be with them but there wasn't any room, apparently. We'll be taking her south to Barrie with us, presuming that there's room :).
The reason that I shoveled the end of the driveway was that the snowblower, on the second run, had stopped suddenly as if there was a kill switch. I'd just started clearing the snow that I had moved off the two cars. It wouldn't start again so I moved it into the barn, expecting to deal with it later.
After Mass, I placed a heater behind it for a while and then tried again and sure enough, when I pressed the primer bulb, I could hear/feel the suction and it started right up. Before that, the bulb had operated without doing anything. It seems that a little ice had blocked the intake line ... or perhaps frozen ethanol ? Don't know. I'll have to put some "watersorb" into the tank and/or gas line antifreeze ... but that will be next year or some maintenance that I should do during the summer.
Jeffrey had used up all the gas in the jerry can running the 4-wheeler so when I went to gas up the blower, I had to use gas out of the whaler tank. I'm betting that I picked up a little water at that point and created the problem with the blower. The Whaler gas tank is obviously something else that I should treat with watersorb.
Although it was cold, there wasn't any wind and Matthew had a great time plowing his little body through the snow banks, when Jeffrey took him up by the barn to clean off his car and move it onto the driveway. Jumping into the snowbanks along the back deck, one leg went down between the deck and the snowbank, much to his surprise and dislike :).
Cassie also had a blast. Plowing through the snow, buried at times, she burned a lot of energy. However, her feet get cold quickly. She's not made for cold or snow. This morning she's even quicker to come back into the house as it's minus 13F ... yup, very very cold; not as cold as we've experienced, but cold.
Jeffrey intends to head to Science North in Sudbury today with the gang plus Lauren and then leave for PA tomorrow. Our plan is to head out later that same day; estimate how far we'll get and book something as we drive. Erie PA or south would be good, but even Burlington ON would get us effectively 6 hours on the way (2 hours close-up prep and 4 hours driving). We'll make arrangements to meet up with Stef or Aaron at a Barrie pull-off to had over Lauren :).
I caught up with Bonnie Matthews, trading news. She already knew all there was to know about Loring. I knew from Facebook that they'd had Christmas at Pam's. Apparently Pauline was also over somewhere in that timeframe. Jim's going to have his 4th prostate operation shortly; they're going to try some minimally invasive laser surgery this time. They're happy in Magnetawan ... Bonnie says that they should have moved there 10 years earlier.
Onward !
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