Weekend

So we returned from the Big Apple (subject of an other post) ony to find our driveway completely blocked by a three foot wall of hard packed snow constructed by the city plows just doing their job. It seems we narrowly escaped to NYC last Sunday ahead of an eight to ten inch snow storm. Our Indian cabby, trying to be helpful, thought he could just drive through the snow barrier and zip up the driveway...WRONG. We tried to stop him but he would not be deterred. You guessed it...stuck in the snow with the front drive wheels spinning freely(actually it was drive wheel since the Dodge Minivan didn't have pos-a-traction(sp?). Now in addition to having to lug two suitcases up the snowy driveway, I had to help our well intentioned cab driver dig his vehicle out of it's entrapment. For those of you who have never lived through a winter in Michigan, as well as those who have supressed such memories, "digging" a vehicle out of a snow bank isn't just a matter of clearing snow away from the wheels....no,no,no my friends, it involves digging and removing the snow from UNDER the vehicle. You see that is where the "stuck" comes from....the frame of the van was resting comfortably on the snow bank while the tires were virtually suspended above the surface of the ground! In other words IT'S A HELL OF ALOT OF WORK...made all the  more difficult by the fact that the temperature was at or above freezing which makes the snow nice and wet (aka heavy). After fifteen minutes or so of vigorous digging we were able to free the van and get the grateful hack back to his business. I am convinced he will never again attempt to "off road" a minivan again. For my part, I spent another half hour digging out the rest of the snow wall from the driveway entrance so we could get in and out until our neighbor(who plows the driveway) returns from a week in sunny Florida...the bastard. I dragged my weary backside up the driveway and straight on to the couch for a well deserved snooze! Oh, and by the way, we received another couple inches of snow overnight as a reminder that winter in Michigan is still going strong. Don't you wish you too could enjoy the "change of seasons" we Yankees will tell you makes living in the climate so "special"?