Compared to the alternatives (a beat-up old blue Ford pickup or being snowed in), the snowplow (when it works) is truly lovely. Heavy equipment, such as graders, bulldozers, loaders, and snow-plow-equipped dumptrucks are cool. Perhaps not Monet artsy, but they have their charms. It really depends on your notion of what constitutes "lovely".
Something that is probably very hard for which_chick to demonstrate through photos (because she is holding on with both hands for dear life while plowing the rocky unpaved road and cannot therefore take photos) is how cool the plow looks when it is heaving virgin snow off the road on the first pass before the road has been partly plowed or driven on. It's hypnotic to sit in the passenger's seat and watch the endless crest of snow rolling off the plow onto the edge of the road like a big white wave. Slightly wettish snow works best for this -- the fluffy, powdery stuff blows too much.
It's also kind of fun to drive the plow when it is behaving and when you're not hitting too many rocks -- those tend to give the dumptruck (which doesn't have the smoothest ride under the best of circumstances) very strong bangs and bounces, sort of like running into a curb or a speedbump with your car without slowing down. Repeatedly. Plus the plow (which weighs several hundred pounds if it's an ounce) bounces on rocks (more like surfacing boulders than "rocks" -- you skip rocks on the water -- these ain't "rocks) that protrude from the road, which makes the ride even more harrowing, especially if there's ice under the snow and the truck is fishtailing some.
The bouncing plow can also cause additional difficulties -- bouncing causes the snow to blow up on the windshield, decreasing visibility. This is not a good thing, especially as the worst thing that can happen when plowing your way up a few hundred vertical feet of road over a mile+ lenght of road is that you lose your forward momentum and have to restart with a big pile of snow in front of you on a slick road. If you stop to clean off the windshield or to deice the wipers, that is your inevitable fate: a restart with no momentum.
The best part is that no matter how much money truck engineers put into things like the drivetrain, suspension, etc., virtually no money was ever put into things like windshield wipers. So as you drive and the snow flies up into the windshield periodically, the wipers become more and more encrusted in ice, preventing them from functioning on anything like an efficient level. They more or less work by brute force, shoving snow side to side without ever really clearing the windshield. You are then left with blasting the heat onto the windshield as hard as possible to melt some of this off, which causes fogging inside because there is usually a fair amount of moisture on you, your shoes, etc. The end result is that you end up hurtling up a mountain, pushing a big wave of snow while driving the road essentially by memory knowing that if you stop, you probably get to back down the road (with a big ass heavy plow on the front that makes backing a little tricky) to a place where you can get up the momentum again to take a whack at the snow again.
If you fail at backing blindly down the road for your re-whack or if you somehow get the plow truck off the road, your next fun task is to walk back to whence you started, in the snow, usually in the pitch black (it is invariably overcast when it snows and the road gets plowed in the early winter morning or the night, so it is black out).
There, you get to ty to start an ice-cold diesel motor that powers the bulldozer (which has no cab) to drive it to where you stuck the truck so you can yank the truck back onto the road with a big ol' chain (which you get to lug onto the bulldozer with you whilst (see! I got to use "whilst") you ride the bulldozer back to the truck. Then, after saving the truck and returning the bulldozer back to the starting point, you trudge back (uphill and in the snow) to where the truck is (if you do not have a partner for this fun task - a driving partner can save lots of walking/trudging) and restart the truck on its Cruella De Ville ride through the snowy darkness.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2005-03-03 04:31 am (UTC)Lovely is in the eye of the beholder
Date: 2005-03-04 04:35 am (UTC)Something that is probably very hard for which_chick to demonstrate through photos (because she is holding on with both hands for dear life while plowing the rocky unpaved road and cannot therefore take photos) is how cool the plow looks when it is heaving virgin snow off the road on the first pass before the road has been partly plowed or driven on. It's hypnotic to sit in the passenger's seat and watch the endless crest of snow rolling off the plow onto the edge of the road like a big white wave. Slightly wettish snow works best for this -- the fluffy, powdery stuff blows too much.
It's also kind of fun to drive the plow when it is behaving and when you're not hitting too many rocks -- those tend to give the dumptruck (which doesn't have the smoothest ride under the best of circumstances) very strong bangs and bounces, sort of like running into a curb or a speedbump with your car without slowing down. Repeatedly. Plus the plow (which weighs several hundred pounds if it's an ounce) bounces on rocks (more like surfacing boulders than "rocks" -- you skip rocks on the water -- these ain't "rocks) that protrude from the road, which makes the ride even more harrowing, especially if there's ice under the snow and the truck is fishtailing some.
The bouncing plow can also cause additional difficulties -- bouncing causes the snow to blow up on the windshield, decreasing visibility. This is not a good thing, especially as the worst thing that can happen when plowing your way up a few hundred vertical feet of road over a mile+ lenght of road is that you lose your forward momentum and have to restart with a big pile of snow in front of you on a slick road. If you stop to clean off the windshield or to deice the wipers, that is your inevitable fate: a restart with no momentum.
The best part is that no matter how much money truck engineers put into things like the drivetrain, suspension, etc., virtually no money was ever put into things like windshield wipers. So as you drive and the snow flies up into the windshield periodically, the wipers become more and more encrusted in ice, preventing them from functioning on anything like an efficient level. They more or less work by brute force, shoving snow side to side without ever really clearing the windshield. You are then left with blasting the heat onto the windshield as hard as possible to melt some of this off, which causes fogging inside because there is usually a fair amount of moisture on you, your shoes, etc. The end result is that you end up hurtling up a mountain, pushing a big wave of snow while driving the road essentially by memory knowing that if you stop, you probably get to back down the road (with a big ass heavy plow on the front that makes backing a little tricky) to a place where you can get up the momentum again to take a whack at the snow again.
If you fail at backing blindly down the road for your re-whack or if you somehow get the plow truck off the road, your next fun task is to walk back to whence you started, in the snow, usually in the pitch black (it is invariably overcast when it snows and the road gets plowed in the early winter morning or the night, so it is black out).
There, you get to ty to start an ice-cold diesel motor that powers the bulldozer (which has no cab) to drive it to where you stuck the truck so you can yank the truck back onto the road with a big ol' chain (which you get to lug onto the bulldozer with you whilst (see! I got to use "whilst") you ride the bulldozer back to the truck. Then, after saving the truck and returning the bulldozer back to the starting point, you trudge back (uphill and in the snow) to where the truck is (if you do not have a partner for this fun task - a driving partner can save lots of walking/trudging) and restart the truck on its Cruella De Ville ride through the snowy darkness.