winter's icy grip...and not about to let go.

Anyone living around St. Paul or Smallsville (that suburb across the river) this past week or so might have bet that winter was in full-blown, panicked retreat. We had temps up over 50º, snow melting like crazy, grass reappearing where we'd never expected to see it again. Ever. I enjoyed it as much as the next guy but I suspected that if winter was in retreat then it was, at most, a strategic one and that we'd get our booties kicked for thinking that spring might come early this year.

I had a couple of run-ins with winter's shock troops before the February thaw that deserve to be remembered. A couple of beloved family members fell victim to the cold and ice and at least one person whom I've never met, other than in passing, very well could have.

The neighbor across the street shares my near-obsession (OK, outright obsession) with keeping not only our sidewalks cleared during the snowy months but as much as possible of the street fronting our houses too. Michael's got a huge technological edge over me in so far as he owns a honkin' huge-ass snowblower. He'll run that bad boy up and down his side of the street for hours to do what our city workers seem not to be allowed to do. That is, actually clear the street of snow. I think that snow emergency regulations ban car owners from parking on an east-west residential street during emergency plowing until that job is completed "curb to curb". Like that's ever happened. If Michael and I hadn't been so busy shoveling out the street, I swear that the banked snow on both boulevards would have spread until they met in the middle and created a perfect half-pipe for the snowboard crowd.

I have to resort to old-fashioned technology to allow Miz Susan and I to park our cars at something less than a 45º angle from the horizontal. By this I mean shovels. I've driven our shovels at a killing pace this winter and I've killed off more than couple of them. A good general has to be willing to sacrifice troops in a righteous cause and I see this as a just war. It's pretty easy not to form any emotional attachments to the plastic and lightweight metal junk that the hardware stores are peddling these days. But a solid shovel takes on a life of its own. A lesser loss than the function of my left leg on Christmas Day of 2009 was an old standby, a heavy aluminum-bladed coal shovel that could chop thru mounds of snow effortlessly. I'd left it on the boulevard and someone stole it from us as we were calling Urgent Care.

I had a tougher time with the war wounds suffered by another couple of veteran snow warriors. I've had two old 40's era shovels that I bought 30 years ago at a house sale in the neighborhood, literally just a couple of blocks from here. These were rugged old beasts, heavy and unwieldy and clumsy. Miz Susan hates them and tells me so on a regular schedule and that, further, I'm an idiot for keeping them. Whatever. They were the best we had for getting right down to the pavement in icy conditions and I'm not one to repay loyalty by sending old friends off to the landfill. At any rate, during one of my last attempts to excavate the curbstones, both of these guys succumbed to the strain. When the first one bit the dust I figured, "OK, you've lived a good life and you deserve some rest.". But when the second one fell victim to identical damages, I dug in my heels. These shovels are candidates for repair. Isn't that why we can buy progressively bigger nuts and bolts and washers? These two are going to go thru a brief rehab period and they're gonna be out there scraping loud and proud right down to the sidewalk. And besides, Susan hates them. I can't let her win that battle.

The aspiring unknown solder was someone I met in passing (literally if slowly) on Marshall Avenue shortly after dark a couple of weeks ago. I was on the way home from work and was headed up that long grade from the Lake Street Bridge in the Cretin/Cleveland neighborhood. I was still relatively alert after a day of energizing paper-pushing at my slacker state employees union job and so I was able to stop in time and avoid running this dope under the wheels of the Tahoe, bicycle and all. He or she (gender's a tough call what with all of the layering) was slogging up Marshall pretty much in the middle of the lane. And making a good 3-4 mph. Really moving right along.

I hate the summertime spandex-wrapped bicyclists who go up and down Summit Avenue three and four abreast as they admire the Victorian architecture and pass the time of day. But generally, I tip my hat to urban bicyclists and I've got a few friends and acquaintances who do the bike-commute thing right thru the winter. I've had times in my life when my bike was my main transport but I drew the line at riding between the first and last snowfalls of any winter. The one time that I went down on wet pavement (that time in the rain) was enough to make me realize how stupid I'd been that day and how lucky I'd been that I hadn't gotten ground up by the traffic behind me, all of which outweighed me and my bike many times over. Nevermore. But this dummy on Marshall was not only hogging the single passable lane on the road but he wasn't showing anything in the way of warning lights off the back end of either the bike or him/herself. No reflectors, no flashing red lights, no nothing.


When I was able, after a couple of blocks of funeral cortege pace, to slide past this person I took a quick look in the rearview mirror. I suppose I was curious to see if anyone else had run him down and was relieved to see that no one had. Yet. I did notice that he had a light on the front of the bicycle. I'm still hard-pressed to see the logic in that one.


That light on the front of the bike might have provided a valuable warning to a driver ahead that it was time to speed up in case the bike rider was trying to hook onto the rear bumper for a free ride. It would have made more sense to me to turn the whole dam contraption around and ride it backwards. It wouldn't have been a whole helluva lot slower than the 3-4 mph that it was making in forward speed. And then, the only working light in the whole operation would have actually warned following drivers that they were tailing a complete idiot.


As I write this on Saturday night we're hunkering down for the next savage wintry blast. I'm hearing anywhere from 6-14" before it winds down on Monday morning. Miz Susan and I were out for a few quick errands today including a quick stop at Trader Joe's along with about half of the population of St. Paul, Mendota Heights and Eagan. All busily stocking up for hunkering down. I think we'll make it through the weekend. After all, I've still got a few functioning shovels left and we've got a case of beer in the basement plus all those goodies from TJ's.. We should be good to survive the return of winter.