Cabin fever reliever? Not a chance!

Yesterday was the first day in months--since before Christmas, at least--that the weather was seasonable in Vermont. This meant that it was in the mid-to-high 20s and sunny and we haven't seen the sunshine since... I don't know when.

We were having a pleasant day at the homestead; it was late afternoon, about 3pm, and Andy was watching the Daytona 500 while I read and pottered around the house. The sight of a bulldozer on the road, however, turned our hum-drum day into something just a bit more exciting.

New scoot, the 2015 Q3. Dreamy. (And not fit for a ditch!)

The amount of snow at our house is always substantial and Andy is usually able to keep up with the plowing on his ATV. After the blizzard-like conditions we have been having, though, the driveway had gotten a little tight. I didn't yet mention that I got a new car last week when my Jeopardy! ship sailed in, but I'll tell you now that sinking that beauty into a ditch in our own driveway would turn things into the Shining up in here. Real quick, too. The driveway always becomes a gauntlet this time of year and a break in the sub-zero temperatures can make it even sloppier. But 'm getting ahead of myself, here.

So, in walks the bulldozer. As I said, things didn't get interesting until Andy spied it heading down the road past the house. I should have known that things were going to get interesting when he asked, "How much cash do you have on you?" but for some reason, my Hey Wait, Is This A Bad Idea? switch didn't flick. Andy's scheme, a good one to be sure, was to flag the 'dozer driver down and see how much he would charge to plow out the driveway. Like I said, it made extraordinarily good sense.

...At the time. You see, you go a bit crazy when you have been cooped up for weeks and it has been not much above zero and the pipes have frozen (inside the wall, no less), and you can't even walk to your own garage without nine layers of frostbite protection. The first time Mother Nature gives you a bit of a break, in the form of seasonable--even mild--temperatures, your urge to get outside and do things that feel productive and put you back in control of the winter rises to a fever pitch. What you don't remember is how these seemingly good ideas always end up looking like hair-brained plans when they are in your rear view mirror. We never seem to remember the trouble we can get into when the weather fools us into thinking we're the boss.

At any rate, the driver happily obliged and said that, for $25, he would gladly open up our driveway and get the end of it, the part often smeared around by plow trucks, cleaned up as well. For this, he would use a plow truck that had been trailing the bulldozer down the road. As you can see from the photo, there was a fair amount of snow to be moved. When the fella finished up with the 'dozer, his friend got out of the plow truck, the two switched, and the 'dozer made its exit, presumably to a trailer for hauling back home. No sooner had the bulldozer vanished from view did the plow truck promptly slide off the driveway and into the very same ditch that I had been hoping my shiny new Q3 would avoid.

My first thought, which I shared with the gentlemen in my company, was to hop on the ATV and catch up with the fella in the bulldozer to get him back up to help dig the plow truck out. Now, I don't know if, "We got this" was actually uttered at this point, but it was certainly the prevailing sentiment. I can be sure, though, that this was the moment when I went back into the house to grab my glass of wine. I knew I was in for a show and I wasn't disappointed.

Needless to say, the plow truck driver couldn't get himself out of the ditch and a tug from Andy's truck didn't do the trick either. The truck was buried and, as anyone who has ever been stuck in soft snow on a slope of any kind--even a pretty shallow one--knows, the more you spin those wheels, the deeper you go in the wrong direction. What makes it worse is that, often, it feels like you'll get it out, you just need to rock it once more. That's just the mirage of a long winter playing tricks on you once again.

By the time I snapped the picture above, the plow truck driver had borrowed the ATV to skip down to his buddy's place to enlist his truck, which would be positioned on the down side of the buried truck, for a tug out. Here's the video of the first attempt:

You'll notice after the beep (the driver of the towing truck is deaf in one ear, so a shout wouldn't do) that the tow strap broke on the first pull. Andy's logging chain didn't fare much better:

It was soon decided that the fella on the outside end of the driveway would head back to his shop to get his tractor to winch the stuck truck out of the snow. That ended up being the silver bullet, but it took a while, even then. I have video to share, but Blogger is being picky, so here is the clip on YouTube:

In the end, the plow truck got stuck once more, but with the tractor on hand to winch it right back out, it wasn't too big of a deal. After the truck was liberated, the driver did some touch-up plowing and buried himself again, this time at the foot of the driveway. The tractor finished up once and for all and we called it a night, but not before offering $20 more to our new plowing friend for having fallen unwittingly into the trap that is life on Hell Mountain. I've got to say that all of this had nothing to do with the skill of the plow truck driver. I would call him again in a heartbeat. The snow. The winter. The illusion of it being a quick job. These are the things that messed up everyone's plans.

Through all of this, everybody kept a smile on their faces, which is also the beauty of living where we do. When stuff like this happens, you have no choice but to play along and hope that next year, you remember what a fool's errand it is to try to be anything short of a shut-in until late April. What you would miss, I suppose, if you didn't venture out, are your neighbors and days like yesterday remind us that when it comes to a nasty winter, we're all in it together.

By the way, our heroes jokingly told me not to put anything on YouTube because they always seem to get into these sorts of predicaments when they're together. Perhaps they didn't need any evidence to prove their theory! I will say, though, that if you live in our neck of the woods and you ever need anything done around the house, I would highly recommend Luke at Paul Hallock Excavating and Tim at Joint Venture Homes, the two guys we are now glad to know, even though it took an afternoon in a snow bank to do so.

As for me and the rest of the winter? Well, we're back down in the single digits again today and our time in the relative warmth was literally fleeting. With the driveway widened a bit and now firmed back up, we shouldn't have much else to deal with until spring time.

Shouldn't being the operative word.