Vintonville - The life and times of a guy, his Lady-Friend, a Little Dude and a Little Sis.

Just a few years ago– after the blizzard of ’03– I realized shoveling snow was nothing but sweaty futility crappily disguised as manly, character building work.  Solution? Buying the lazy-man’s best friend: a Snowblower (technically referred to as a “Snow Thrower”).

Of course, anyone who’s ever been in the market for a snow thrower knows it means raising a small mint. With an acute case of pre-buyer’s remorse, I picked up the cheapest snow thrower I could find– the runt in a litter of chain ganged snow throwers lined up outside Wal Mart. I was totally unitiated, so the combination of terms like “single stage” and “two stroke oil” meant nothing to me. Neither did the fact this snow thrower looked like the result of a lonely, cold and drunken night in Paris between an oversized dustbuster and prehistoric “Mo“.

Sadly, it was later in the season I discovered my purchase was a loud, stinky and obnoxious pantywaist. A pantywaist that choked on wet/heavy snow, instantly causing the chute to clog and turning augers from snow gobbling miracles into snow spitting dervishes. A pantywaist intent on demonstrating that tackling snow banks or snowfall over five inches would guarantee an instant shutdown. In short, my first snow thrower was only good for two and a half things: a life lesson in the merits of “what doesn’t kill you makes you cuss better” (and thus the “half” portion: how to artistically string together linguistics-defying chains of four letter words) and practice for the Olympic Hammer Throw.

Luckily, mid-winter of last year, I was saved by a gas can mix-up and some little detail about how two-stroke engines don’t take straight gasoline all that well. It’s not that I tried to sabotage the snow thrower, but the rest of the winter ended up relying on neighborly kindness and Mari-Catherine’s “can-do” attitude to keep our walks clear (she insisted!).

This year, however, I successfully manipulated and weaseled convinced Mari-Catherine that I’d learned my lesson and totally needed a new snow thrower– and not some snow thrower made in the sunny hills of Mexico or the humid expanses of China, either. Oh, no. I was talking about brawny, flanneled, hairy-knuckled construction born from the arctic bosom of Wisconsin– the land that invented Winter.

Needless to say, the new electric start, four stroke, six horse, dual stage Ariens snow thrower cut its teeth and man-handled last weeks accumulation with Northern Midwest authority. My new BFF chewed the dickens out of everything both City Public Works and Old Man Winter (with their towering snow plow drifts blocking the driveway and thick, wet snow) tried throwing at it and chucked their weak antics aside with burly gusto.

What’s up now, Old Man Winter?

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