Woke up to a New Year and a driveway full of snow. Happy New Year to me!

Fortunately, as I like to say I have joint custody of "old red" with my neighbors across the street. It's a friends with benefits situation. He lets me use the snow thrower and I take care of his driveway. It has worked this way for a number of years and we are all content with the arrangement.

Old Red as I affectionally call this cold hearted beast of a MTD snow blower is stubborn, but when it runs nothing can slow it down or get in it's way… I knew I needed to change the belt on the drive assembly out a few weeks ago. With no motivation and lack of snow in the forecast I do what I do best: procrastinate. Today it caught up to me. When I woke up I had grand plans of going to the Zoo to shoot my PaD, or drive in fresh snow in the Cuyahoga Valley or a million other things other than fixing this beast.

Accomplishing the belt change pretty quickly and ready to throw snow and get on with my day, old red like a stubborn old mule would not move. Cussing, yanking, spraying starting fluid and more cranking on the pull handle and breaking out in a sweat finally got this cold hearted bitch running. While I truly love using this wonderful machine it has a personality that seems to be able to stop time and suck away your productive hours in the goal of just cleaning off the drive.

Fast forward a bit and like a Zamboni machine, scraping and throwing ice and snow from a once covered drive down to bare concrete. All is right in the world, until the next 3 to 6 inches shows up…


Happy New Year.