This winter hasn't been a very harsh one here in the northeast. We've set record highs left and right and it was 72 degrees ON CHRISTMAS EVE. While my wife loves that kind of weather, the kids and I were longing for some snow to fall. Up until last weekend, we had none... but that was about to change.
My oldest son Tyler swears that his favorite season is winter. I'm not so sure that I believe him because he's always asking when baseball season starts. My other son Carter seems to be indifferent about the cold weather; he will play any sport in any type of weather. However it always seems like we play basketball outside when the temperature is the coldest. As for myself, having grown up in Western New York, I've always had an affinity towards the cold. Like a lot of men my age and older I can vividly remember walking uphill five miles in the snow to get to school and I liked it.
We don't get as much snow as I used to get when I was a kid. Back then in Western New York a lot depended on which way the wind blew. You could get four feet, while your neighbor a mile away might not even realize that it snowed. When I was younger, the snow would fall before Halloween and last until Mother's Day. Now it snows, then it melts, then it snows, and melts again. I'm under the feeling that if it's going to be cold outside, it might as well be snowing.
And last weekend it snowed... did it ever snow.
Twelve inches may seem like a lot, but at this point we were only half way through the storm. It would go on snowing for another 12 hours and the storm would dump 21 inches of snow all together. I'm not one to let the snow finish falling before I get out and clear my driveway. I would much rather clear our seven inches three times than the entire 21 inches as once. I'm tough, but not "clear 21 inches at once" tough.
I was sent a pack of lozenges by the folks at Fisherman's Friend and asked to take an EPIC picture. I didn't want to fake a winter scene like Patrick Quinn did, pretend to know what snow is, like James Zahn, or never leave the house like The Thirsty Daddy. Much like Chris Burnholdt, this Winter Storm Jonas (can we stop naming these storms please) was the perfect opportunity to get out and show how tough I was.
I like to call this one "The First of Many." This was about 10:00 am and the plows had barely been through our neighborhood (which is another story). The snow was really falling at this point; probably two inches an hour at least. I think one of my kids was still asleep and the other was at a sleepover party in the neighborhood. I didn't need to get out of my driveway, but I'm a guy with a snowblower... I HAD to get out of my driveway. By the way, I took this photo myself (#SELFIE!)
The only problem with getting so much snow at once was that it made it almost impossible to sled in. We had to really wait until the next next day before we could get out and play in it.
Sadly, it's only a week and a half later and all the snow has melted... but there might be more on the horizon! Better go get bread, milk, and eggs... and Fisherman's Friend Lozenges.
Fisherman’s Friend throat lozenges are the toughest on the market, originally formulated in 1865 for deep-sea fishermen from Fleetwood, England. And they are now perfect for a dad who shovels snow in New Jersey. It's good to have friends in snowy places.
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