The Alaskan Man

In November, we started our baby tour. First, we travelled to the DC area to visit Thomas' side of the family. Then, we travelled to the LA area to visit Leslie's side of the family. Sandwiched between both trips was a brief week home where we struggled with several snowstorms. As it seems, our snowblower always breaks when we most need it. I constantly got the car stuck at the bottom of the driveway and it would take Thomas a good half an hour of dangerous manuevering at high speeds down Hiland Rd at a particular angle in order to slam into a several feet high snowwall that the street plows bottleneck into our driveway and hope that the momentum would carry the car all the way up the incline.

Finally, a friend took pity on our situation and lent us their ATV equipped with a snowplow. He loaded it onto their truck and suggested that Thomas drive it home after work, plow our driveway, and return it the next day. Simple enough, right? Well, from about 10pm-midnight, I watched Thomas struggle with getting the ATV to start. I stayed out of his way since I could just imagine what was going on in Thomas' head (it reminds me of the time a boy friend of mine took me camping and how his malehood was eviscerated by our fellow Glacier National Park employees when they discovered he wasn't able to get the tent setup). After much cussing, he crashed for the night, then got up around 5am to try again. The ATV started (apparently it had to be charged), but then it took another hour to figure out how to get it off the truck. I discovered later, that apparently due to the plow attachment, you have to unload the ATV on an incline or something complicated like that. By the time, he started plowing, (oh and all this was done in the dark by the way) it was time to go to work. Fortunately, our friend allowed us to hang onto it another day so we had a chance to enjoy playing with what many consider an essential Alaskan Man's toy.