15 Feb 06. 7:30am The ice storm is over. My 300+ ft driveway is covered with 2 inches of solid snowy ice. Usually I use a big snowblower and can battle over a foot of snow with no problem. Today we are rendered helpless. Jenny can't get out with the baby if she needed to. If there was a fire I don't know that the trucks could get down the driveway. The blower just gets stuck on the ice and can't power through it. I should have blown more last night. Even the strip I did do last night is covered in ice. The only thing that gets anything up is my flat steel shovel. His name is Ames. I'm getting to know him well. His sticker says "always a better idea". Well I can't think of one. I have been out there for 2 and 1/2 hours. All I have cleared is the area I did last night. That was hard. The other areas are 5 times as hard. Every strip I clear takes lots of energy scraping. This sucks. I'd rather run 4 marathons straight with Jay than do this. At least it would be worth something. This is insane. No one else would attempt this. I think it could really take me 12 or more hours. Well a quick tea and some new socks while the Soleilites try to hold the hill..unfortunetly they have little leverage at this time of year.
A few more hours in and I've added a couple feet in width to about 3/4 of the driveway.
It is now almost 6pm. I'm gone mad. I've cleared about 3/4 of the width of the 300ft straight away. I am now up near my garage where it is a big wide area. I have no idea how I am going to finish this. The wind is howling and I smell like a wet dog. A quick bite and some water and I'm back out. I think I'll start a fire out there as well in my little metal fire pit thingy.
9:20 pm. I saw a shrew I think. I heard the neighbors cat. It always takes the same path into my yard. I think I got enough done so we could get out if we had to. Ice scraping sucks. What a bunch of wasted energy sent in a useless direction. I'm movin out of here I think.
5 comments:
Vince Lombardi:
It is time for us to stand and cheer for the doer, the achiever, the one who recognizes the challenge and does something about it.
Napoleon Bonaparte:
Victory belongs to the most persevering.
Robert Frost:
The only way around is through.
John F. Kennedy:
When written in Chinese the word crisis is composed of two characters. One represents danger, and the other represents opportunity.
James Buckham:
Every trial endured and weathered in the right spirit makes a soul nobler and stronger than it was before.
Winston Churchill:
Never, never, never, never give up.
Vincent Lombardi:
All right Mister, let me tell you what winning means... you're willing to go longer, work harder, give more than anyone else.
H. Jackson Brown:
In the confrontation between the stream and the rock, the stream always wins, not through strength but by perseverance.
John Wooden:
It is not so important who starts the game but who finishes it.
Madness....or pure genius!
Is not your battle a metaphor for all of life?
Do we chip and scrape in vain only to fall to the futility and utter waste of deeds gone unnoticed and ineffectual as time marches us on....
or does one person make a difference, is there not something of the hero in all of us, and in every moment a chance for adventure. No tracks go unnoticed by the Great Spirit.
There's an old chinese proverb:
Don't curse the darkness. Light a candle.
It was an interesting trial. Knowing from the beginning that it was meaningless. The spartan challenge was the only thing that got me through it. At 7am I walked up my cleared driveway,got to my car which looked like it should back out easy..and spun the tires in the grass and ice. I pulled Jenny's car out of the garage and drove up the driveway and to work. My shovel and ice pick are somewhere in the woods. blah how depressing. I think all the people that said...I wouldn't buy that house...were right. Sure I CAN do it buy why. Some trials are good to prove something to yourself..but some are just plain dumb.
Thanks for the comments and quotes. Thanks for the insight...the tutalage to always ask the questions. Do I have the will to make it through this? Did I make it through that? Was it worth making it through that, or could my time have been spent beter? Should I expect to do that again? Should I make changes to avoid having to do that? Would someone else get anything out of doing that? And lastly for those interested I suggest listening to a song by The Clancy Brothers called "Dear Boss". It was a perfect song for one of those days...when you work all the night only to find your car is still stuck..and you drop your shovel to the side and it hugs the crest of the hill...then slides into oblivion. I think thats the end of all my Psedoandrea!
People ask me, 'Do you have optimism about the world, about how terrible it is?' And I say, 'Yes, it's great the way is it' [...] I had the wonderful privilege of sitting face to face with [a Hindu guru] and the first thing he said to me was "Do you have a question?", cause the teacher always answers questions... I said, 'Yes, I have a question.' I said, ' Since in Hindu thinking all the universe is divine, a manifestation of divinity itself, how can we say no to anything in the world? How can we say no to brutality to stupidity to vulgarity to thoughtlessness?' And he said, 'For you and me, you must say yes'. Well, I learned from my friends who were students of his that that happened to be the first question he asked his guru, and we had a wonderful conversation for an hour there.
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