* or as Peter Sellers might have said, Snow fuel like an old fuel.
We have snow. All Ukraine has snow. A great deal of snow. Three days worth, at temperatures around 0C. Heavy, wet, heart-attack type snow. The news tonight showed Kyiv up to its armpits and Dnipropetrovs'k, too. Traffic bogged down everywhere.
We went to town Friday for groceries and I was in town again on Saturday for printer cartridges but I should have stayed home. The side roads were either heavy or slippery or both. The plows and sanders had been on the main streets at least.
Yesterday we stayed put. A neighbour ditched her Lada right in front of our house and her husband called a truck to tow her out. Andrei came out in the evening to borrow my car. The snow was "too deep for a Lexus". His ride out brought a whole car load of boys "just in case". They had to push both cars from our place to the corner. I was young and foolish once myself. Now I am not young anymore.
I did go out and shovel the walks twice. Yesterday and again today. With the help of the dogs who love the snow and were rolling around making doggy snow angels. I hate shoveling. My experience has been that if I leave it long enough snow usually disappears...Tanya gets tired of waiting for me and she shovels it. Guilt makes me do strange things. Like shovel.
A tractor and blade cleared our road just as I finished shoveling. Maybe we'll even get garbage pick up tomorrow. The highlight of every Tuesday - will the truck come or won't it? Will the stray dog get he garbage before the truck does? Heart pounding stuff out here in the village.
We were going to go to Dnipropetrovs'k today but declined the honour. Good thing too. The mini-bus from Dnipro took 4 hours to make a 2.5 hour trip. Next week the roads and the weather will be better. I hope there is something good at the theatre as we will take a flat ($35) and stay overnight.
One good thing from this wet snow. Other than slippery, the roads will be heavenly to drive. ALL the holes are filled in with packed snow and the road is smooth.
Not a lot of snow here yet this winter. But it is not over yet.
ReplyDeleteStill following your blog and enjoying your life and adventures vicariously, the travel through the snow would be no trouble for the old Al with Sask driving experience and the (I think) 1956 Buick!
ReplyDeleteNo snow here yet in Texas Hill country although they have been having various amounts in the panhandle. Still dry but not record breaking drought anymore, some green starting to show from winter showers.
The summer fires were something but they were part of the countryside before man. Now with the land covered with scrub cedar and Mesquite(creosote bush), it is a disaster waiting to happen.
With Texas laws of Game ownership and hunting rights being far more valuable than beef, the scrub is now valuable landscape.
Blair
DON'T SHOVEL = Heart attack!
I'm looking for the context. The weather was so bad that you had to sit at your desk and keep yourself busy in the blogsphere, etc.?
ReplyDeleteI hope you have better weather, and soon. And that you don't have a guilty heart attack. That would make Tanya feel so guilty, and annoyed at you, for dropping dead on her (particularly if that happens before you have finished shovelling he snow).
Do sit by the fire and read a good book.
Blair, you remember well. It was indeed a 56 Buick. 5 mpg one icy cold winter week but it could go through snow. Are you living in the Texas Hill country, hiding out or just wintering?
ReplyDeleteRob, I am careful when I shovel.
DC you may get more snow in Feb-March.
"Now I am not young anymore." :)
ReplyDeleteYou used to have the same theory about snow shovelling when we were young. As I recall, Mom and us kids did a lot of shovelling in those days.
ReplyDeleteSee, I was right.
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