We can haz snoblo-ing nao!

teeka is at Menards right now trying to talk the gate guard into letting her drive away with an uncrated snow blower (it didn't fit in the truck with the crate on).

We're replacing the 1987 Toro 521 (21-inch, 3-speed) with a Yardmachines 24" 6-speed.

Hopefully, this means two things: Being able to spend most of my time moving snow instead of trying to get the snow thrower to run, and being able to snow throw over the pile that is the sides of the bottom of the driveway.

(no subject)

teeka, unfortunately, is in the living room worrying about having to go to the dentist tomorrow to have a crown reinstalled (hopefully it's that simple).

I just got done having more fun than any self-respecting snow goon should have.

The old snowblower took about an hour and a half to do the driveway, the sidewalk, and the extra paths through the yard.

We think I did it in about 45 minutes, including doing 2-3 extra neighbors worth of sidewalk, and cutting the plow berms next to the driveway and the curb ramp back about 3 feet. I didn't get the street pushed back all the way to the curb, because I didn't bring a shovel, and I can only reach about 30" high on the bank with just the snowblower (which has a 21" high cut, according to the manual). I'll probably work on that tomorrow when I go out to shovel off the roof.

Turning radius is similar to the old one, and I can still make the corner next to the garage to get to the back yard path, and I cleaned out the path we cut for the mail carrier, and turned around in the neighbor's driveway, as now I can climb the hill going into their yard (I followed the extension of the cut they made right up onto their front sidewalk).

I need to make a few adjustments tomorrow. The skid plates need to be lowered (they're in the factory-set "high" position now) so that the scraper bar doesn't catch on the sidewalk high points as much, and I need to tighten the bracket for the chute because it swivels the crank away from the chute and then I can't rotate it.

Other than that, I'm going to give the new snowblower a rating of at least 4 snowballs (out of 5).