Uncle

Over Christmas I made the strategic mistake of not clearing all of my driveway the first time it snowed, and now I have about half (down from three quarters) of it covered with ice and/or hard pack snow. Over the past few days, morning and night, I've been spending about 45 minutes chipping away at it, and that's caused my elbow's tendinitis to majorly flare up.

I cried uncle today, and over lunch went out and bought a new snow thrower. A snazzy Toro CCR 3650 GTS single stage snow thrower. My arm (and not being in crippling pain) is worth way more than $700 to me.

I decided on a single stage snow thrower because they have rubber paddles that will get down to the pavement/sidewalk, and that's really what I need to clear. I need it clear for walking on, not driving on. Toro's web site says that this model should be all that I need, even if we get occasional dumps of 8" of wet snow. Hopefully they weren't exaggerating.

I don't need one of those monster two stage snow throwers, which are only a hundred or so more than what I just bought. Even though I have a large driveway, you could probably get 6 cars parked on it, and about 100' of sidewalk to clear, what I really want is the pavement clean. It doesn't seem that we get any serious amount of snow (at least not for the past few years), like in the mountains or up north, so being able to clear down to the concrete is more of a need than removing huge quantities of snow.

It's suppose to snow an inch or so tonight, so I'll report back on how well it works tomorrow.

Next up, dealing with gutters full of ice and half melted snow...