North and South

When traveling, there's two things that tell me I'm in the real south. The first is that there seems to be a Waffle House on every other corner. There are not many of those in New England.

In a more serious vein, the other thing is long driveways. In snow country houses are built close to the road. It's especially noticeable with older houses, houses built before the invention of snowblowers. If you've got to hand shovel snow you don't want your house at the end of a 300 foot driveway.

Below the snow zone, long and winding driveways are more common. It's nice to have some distance and privacy from the road, without the snow removal penalty.

Snow shoveling is a depressing thing. All winter long the snow shoveler labors heroically. By summer, there's nothing to show for all this work. Next year, repeat.

There are a few long driveways in snow country. A home owner may think, no problem, I'll just put a plow on my truck or buy a snowblower. Plows are not cheap and they put an awful lot of wear and tear on a truck. Wise shoppers avoid buying former plow trucks. Snowblowers work, but are loud, smelly, burn gas, plus require maintenance and repair. Not only that, while it's possible to move snow faster than with a shovel, it's still a lot of work.

I'm too lazy to own a snowblower. True, I'd spend less time shoveling, but that time would be spent earning money to keep the snowblower going.

Once in a while, snow storms can overwhelm normal snow removal tools. Imagine getting several feet of heavy wet snow overnight. Once it has a chance to pile up, the only way to remove it is with a bucket loader. Normal plows and snowblowers cant' touch it.

There's a cabin just down the road from me with a long driveway. The owners normally only use it in the summer, but they spent the weekend there recently. Instead of plowing, snowblowing, or shoveling, they put on snowshoes and hiked in.

I knew a young couple who's house sat so far off the road, they'd use a snowmobile to get from their parking spot to the house. They put up with that for two winters before selling the place. All that hassle to get from the car door to the house added up.

Right now I'm wondering about the minimum amount of shoveling that will be necessary to get my boat out of the driveway. It always feels a bit weird to tow a sailboat through snow country. Once I get to the land of long driveways, it won't look so odd.

-Sixbears