Snow Day - Again

 The old tractor started right up yesterday. A fresh 12 volt battery spinning a 6 volt starter motor on an engine with low compression is just the ticket to get things turning over even when it's 10 degrees. The weather man was right on the money when he was forecasting 8" of new snow. In fact, we may have gotten a bit more with what came down in the morning. The blade on the tractor does a great job when the snow is 4-5 inches or less, not so much when it's trying to push 10-12 inches when you add up the new snow and what was already there.

I got it opened up but not quite wide enough I discovered when I tried to drive the truck down the lane later in the day. I managed to get stuck 4 or 5 times which required a bunch of shoveling to get me moving again. I noticed when trying to rock the truck back and forth it wouldn't spin the wheels at a high rpm when I had it in reverse. I don't know if there is some type of electronic governor or what but I could have used a few more revolutions a couple of times.

When I got down to the end and turned around I hit the throttle and tried to keep it going without having to lift. I was really "chopping wood" as the sprint car guys would say, sawing back and forth on the wheel. I made it though. I'll run the tractor down the lane again today to widen it out a bit and scrape it down more.

I'm certainly not alone in battling the snow and ice. We didn't lose power like much of the country has these past few days. I saw that Texas had blackouts due to the extra demand put on the grid from to the cold temps. I've got a nephew who lives out by Portland who was without power due to the ice storms and, of course, California has blackouts as a regular occurrence. President Biden has just decreed that all the government vehicles are going to be "E" rigs in the future. It'll be real interesting when all those vehicles won't be able to move due to the grid shutting down for whatever reason may come around. I think if I was going to buy an electric vehicle I'd make sure I'd be able to charge it back up if there was a power outage and always have enough charge to make the return trip.