Of course, the first thing we did was drive somewhere. I
don't remember where we went, but I know I put tire chains on
the car eventually. Before I did that, we got stuck trying
to get up a tiny little hill. I had to back up and get a
running start. ;-) |
This is the house at the end of the street... occupied by some
friends of ours. |
NO ONE was out on the road except us. It was very quiet
and surreal. Oregon basically shuts down when 2" of snow
hit the ground. There's no facility to manage it and there
are a lot of hills to make it extra dangerous. |
This is our backyard. |
The kids played a bit there. |
Then we took out the inflatable toboggan and zipped down the
street! |
Amy and the boys made a really cool snowman. This thing
was standing far after the snow melted. |
The artist and her creation. |
I wanted to see how perfectly shaped I could get my snow balls. |
|
OK, just
for fun, you can see a small video of me zipping down my front
yard on the toboggan, across the sidewalk, over a small ramp we
build and into the street. Although it's filled with air,
I still landed kinda hard. Plus I'm old now, so it hurt
extra special. |
On the 5th, we got hit with another storm, but it was mostly
ice. Here you see me with my handicap shovel. I
didn't have a reasonable snow shovel and that was the last one
they had left at Home Depot. It actually works VERY well.
If you look very carefully, you'll see the Christmas lights are
still up. Oops. |
Can you see the ice on the ground along the
walkway and driveway? I used a spade to hack and pull this
stuff up. Out of my own curiosity and as a demonstration
of estimating and math for the kids, I calculated how much
weight I moved in the course of tossing it all into the yard.
I took a sample of ice, measured it in 3 dimensions and weighed
it. Then I measured the entire volume of ice I moved
(based on square footage and an assumed uniform thickness.)
The end result was about 3/4 of a ton! |
Pretty pictures of things covered in ice. |
 |
In this picture, you'll notice the lights are no longer up.
I guess I took them down while they were covered in ice. I
don't remember that. Maybe I'm blocking it out... |
