Its a Snow Day here at Northern Collaborative and at Second Signal, our wholly owned subsidiary (yeah, they're both just me). We're expecting between 10 and 16 inches of fresh snow by tomorrow morning. So far we have around 4 or 5. Yesterday, I took the spouse-mobile (a 2004 Honda mini van) down to the fire station, pulled Engine 1 out on the ramp, backed the spouse-mobile in, closed the bay door, and swapped the regular wheels and tires for snows (on the van, not the fire engine). It was nice to be able to do that in a 60 degree truck bay with plenty of room rather than out on my driveway in 20 degrees and wind.

I also went through the annual snow-thrower preparation hell (see "Two and a Half Turns to the Left"). My snow thrower is an 8 horse power Tecumseh motor on an MTD branded two stage machine. It is twelve years old now, and each year gives me grief in one form or another. I guess twelve year olds are just universally like that. This year it just didn't seem to run right and I couldn't adjust the carburetor enough to get it to behave. When I took the cowling off to see, it was obvious why. The rubber fuel line was spraying gasoline onto the carb, into the inlet, and nearly onto the muffler (not a good plan, really). So on top of the thirty minute round trip drive to the auto parts store for a foot long hunk of line, I had the joy of a two hour process of pulling the starter motor, the fuel tank, and most of the engine cowlings and heat shields just to get to where you carefully route this little bit of hose around to the carburetor. I also installed a cheap in-line fuel filter -- MTD never saw fit to provide one for some reason.

The good news this morning, is that it started up on the first pull -- I rarely use the electric start -- and the drive was cleared in just a few minutes without major effort.

It's beautiful out today -- six inches of fresh powder on the ground now, and lots more on the way. I'll post pictures later.