It’s nice to come here and read about everyone’s day. Laugh out loud at some posts. Sad to hear about others…..Skypony’s aunt. 🙁 The ridiculously difficult time OldSkiBum had getting home. Whew!
Gonna pull “old woman” trick and tell you of a time years ago: DH and I had a ride home like OldSkiBum. DARK nite….terrible SNOW [space ship going into warp drive describes it SO well!] Forced to go faster than we could see – otherwise the WIND was pushing the car sideways into the ditch on other side. So slick were the roads. Nearly missed our turn….had not twelve cars with lights on been sitting there- they were too afraid to go up the hill beyond where we turned. We made it down one more road…had been traveling for 20 miles and 3 hours when we hit the snowdrift with a big PHOOOOMPH! About 4′ of blown snow drift.
Thot CAREFULLY about what to do next. We only had one set of gloves…and one hat. But wrapped up in other bits of clothes. Still about half mile from our house – we were stable managers and 15 horses waiting for us…and two dogs. So we bundled up with what was to hand…and brought nearly nothing so as to not weight ourselves down. Probably wouldn’t have done it except we DID know every inch of that road. Knew fencing would stop us if we veered off the road, unknowingly. Was a location that one could end up in miles of open pastures but not this road. Also knew everyone if we had to stop at a house. Was an awful trip in dark, wind, snow. But we climbed over several more 4′ drifts and finally made it home.
Changed into dry/proper clothes to go get hay to horses. Keep them alive in this unseasonable weather. To get hay to one set of horses, I wrapped an entire bale up in a nylon horse blanket [slick material] and crawled on hands and knees, dragging it. Up a snowdrift so tall that it topped completely over the fence. But I got hay to those 7 horses. DH and I flipped yard lights on and off to signal each other – where we were. That we were still ok.
FINALLY got to go inside and get warm. People died in that 2 day blizzard cuz they didn’t prepare and/or didn’t know how to improvise. It was mid-Oct for pete’s sake! I’d just picked off the last green tomatoes! Now, drifts taller than me nearly covered 2 horses but we watched to see if we’d have to dismantle the fencing to get them out. But actually the drift kept the wind blocked for them. Did dismantle fence to release them after the storm stopped. Clean up was almost worse cuz hard wind drove snow into everything – including the hatch of our car…when we got back to retrieve it. A drift inside it!
Ach…telling old tales. Today I got outside to remove the last [hopefully] of the stuff from a temporary “shed”. Supposed to be done already but LIFE keeps happening. Y’all know how it is. Think we got it all…only trash and ruined empty boxes to deal with now. Snow came down hard during this … [not amused] and quit soon after we were done. BUT it’s one more thing off the To Do Before Winter list. On the next list we added: Untangle the mess dumped in the garage now.… {roll eyes} At least garage doesn’t leak from faulty tarp roof tho!
OldMtWoman ….I got to ACCOMPLISH SOMETHING…which is exciting to me!!! 🙂
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This reply was modified 1 year, 6 months ago by
OldMt Woman.