Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

by capper

Just wanted to provide an update on my ongoing saga regarding the mutant winter we have had.
You may remember, I had a really bad weekend five weeks ago, when this happened:




Well, at long last, things are starting to look up, and I finally got my vehicle back. I was a bit concerned as that I didn't really have much of a choice in body shops up there, but the guy did a really good job. He paid enough attention to detail that he even hung up my Packer stuff up the same way I had it:

We also had the first contractor in to give us an estimate. To do the garage, including the door, the roof and repairing and reinforcing the roof over the trailer, should be within our range, with the money that we got from the insurance company, and some bucks we had squirreled away from my grandfather's estate.

I also learned some things that will help us save some bucks. I learned how I can get the roof down safely without risking life and limb. I also learned how to fix the roof, but I don't have the right equipment. To buy the lumber, the hardware and the tools would cost about as much as having someone do the job. Plus having someone else do it means I have someone to yell at if it goes wrong.

The only real negative to the weekend, was that the western side of the roof has totally caved in now. The Lambeauni went from this:



to this:



The snow is slowly melting, but only to refreeze every night and form a miniglacier in the middle of the garage. Hopefully, we'll be able to get in there in two or three weeks.

As far as my progress at being the next St. Francis of Assisi...well, they're not feeding out my hands yet, but the flying squirrels did let me get close enough to them for this shot:


The little buggers are fun to watch. They zip around like they've stumbled on someone's meth lab just before coming to eat their dinner.

Ode To Spring

by capper

Here's an oldie I remember my family saying every year about this time of the year:

Spring has sprung.
The grass has riz.
I wonder what the hell
All that white stuff is.

My Continuing Discontent-One Month Later

by capper

I told you about the winter of my discontent that started a month ago. Since then, my vehicle was extracted from the garage and taken to the body shop. The damages to the vehicle came to $6,000. The body shop is having problems getting the necessary parts shipped to it. It took over two weeks to get the roof in. It has been put in, and is being painted. Unfortunately, the interior part of the roof (the liner, etc) has still not come in yet.

In extracting the vehicle from the garage, they had to literally pull the overhead door out with a front end loader. They were then able to prop up the part resting on the roof of my car and pull it out without doing any further damage---to the vehicle. The garage didn't come out as well.

To add to our discontent, the secondary roof over our trailer had its support beams crack. The roof is bowed pretty good, but at least it didn't collapse. The guy who plows our road came and shoveled it off before it got worse. (Yes, we did provide recompense for his risking his life and three hours of his day for us.)

Last weekend I got to go up there for the first time since the collapse of my garage. The weekend after the incident, the weather was crappy. The weekend after that we needed to get my wife's car fixed, thanks to the multitude of potholes.

It was a rough weekend. I went up by myself, as that my beautiful bride had to pull a shift of mandatory overtime on Saturday. We decided that I should go as that we needed to see what we were going to have to contend with. Here is a picture of the side of the garage:

This is what I got to see first when I pulled into the driveway:

As you can see, the entire side has caved in. Fortunately, we got most of the important stuff out before we had left. Unfortunately, we didn't get one major thing out:

There was so much snow and ice, I couldn't get anything safely out of there. In fact, just after I took the picture of the Lambeauni, another piece of the roof cave in and a part landed about five feet away from me. Needless to say, I got the hell out of there as quickly as I could. I'm not going back in until the snow and ice have melted.

My wife and I got up there again this weekend. It looks pretty much the same. The snow has gone down only about an inch, but the ice is a lot worse. Also, a couple more boards have landed on the Lambeauni, from what I could tell.

From the "misery loves company" file, the local paper reports that a number of buildings, almost all them bigger, newer and more expensive than mine also fell from the weight of this year's record-breaking snowfall. These include a potato storage building at Anthony Farms, one of the largest potato growers in the state. They lost 1500 hundredweight of potatoes and it will cost them half a million to replace the building. A grocery store in Wausau and the Conservation Club in Iola also had their roofs cave in. About five miles from our place, a farmer had his brand new barn go down.

The Winter Of My Discontent

by capper

I usually enjoy the winter. The cold doesn't bother me and I only get annoyed with the snow when it hampers travel plans. But the last couple of years have really caused me to start rethinking my attitude towards winter.

Last year, on Valentine's Day, the wonderful and beautiful mrs. capper, on her way to work, hit a patch of black ice and lost control. She spun out and went down a steep hill, driver's side first, towards a small copse of trees. Fortunately, she didn't roll the car and it stopped snug up against a tree, instead of into it. She was shaken but not hurt, but the car was totaled. When I got to the scene of the accident, I literally became ill, because I saw how close I came to losing the love of my life. I've been on edge whenever she has to drive in winter weather since then.

Fast forward to this year. This past weekend, my bride and I went up to our home away from home, our place up north. It was the first time in three weeks that we got the chance to go, because of the weather, and we were both anxious to get back there. When we arrived, we found snow drifts that were four to five feet deep in places, not to mention the end of the drive where the plow placed another four foot tall wall of snow.

Even with the snow blower snapping two shearing pins, we managed to get all the snow cleared out of the drive. The next day we dug out the mailbox and I cleared the three feet of snow off the front porch. I figured I'd do the garage and the main roof Sunday morning. I obviously thought wrong.

Sunday morning, we heard a muffled "whoompf" and ran outside to find this.




That's the inside of what was our garage. To make it even worse, my Highlander was parked in the garage.




And to make sure I got the point, or maybe just to add insult to injury, the garage also took out "the Lambeauni," my Packer-orientated lawn tractor.

Then, as I was scurrying in and out of the garage trying to salvage things before it collapsed, I had a rafter fall on my head given me a slight cut and a large lump. Oh, I'm telling you, this is not going down as one of my better weekends.

The construction crews should be out tomorrow to try to peel the garage door out and hoist the roof enough to get my vehicle out, then we have to wait and see if it salvageable or not. The Lambeauni probably can be fixed, if we can get it out of there.

Everyone tells me that we should be grateful that no one was in the garage at the time, and no one got hurt. I know that they are right, and I am glad that we are OK. Things can be replaced, but people can't. But still, this sucks. Considering the amount of time that the garage sits empty, why did it have to pick one of the rare occasions by car was inside of it before collapsing?

And no, I wasn't doing this to make Bill feel better, and I am not going to blame Walker.

UPDATE: They got the car out of the garage, and to the body shop. It still runs, but the amount of damage vs. the worth of the vehicle makes it still iffy whether or not they decide to total the car.

Thank you everyone for your kind thoughts.

Which Is Worse?

by capper

Which is worse?

Driving on a skating rink or driving through nearly a foot of snow.



OK, it was a trick question. The answer is both.

An Ode To Winter In Wisconsin

by capper

Why I Love Wisconsin ...

It's winter in Wisconsin
And the gentle breezes blow,
70 miles per hour at 52 below!
Oh, how I love Wisconsin
When the snow's up to your butt.
You take a breath of winter air
And your nose is frozen shut.
Yes, the weather here is wonderful,
I guess I'll hang around.
I could never leave Wisconsin,
'Cause I'm frozen to the ground