UltraNurdage

Slip-Sliding Away

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To all of you property owners out there: either (a) learn how to clear a sidewalk properly or (b) hire a competent snow removal service. Salt is not a magical ice-removing substance; it requires certain temperature ranges to work, and you need to actually, you know, spread it.

On top of that, shoveling the snow off of an underlayer of ice actually makes things worse for the average pedestrian. You might have to ::shock, horror:: actually exert some physical effort and clear the sidewalk with an ice scraper!

At any rate, I am glad I own my [Keen Boots of Lesser Hiking], in the Shadow color (their dumb website requires Flash). Oh yes, that was a multi-dimensional Wow and D&D pun. You know you love it.

Incidentally, one of my chores when we lived in Minnesota was scraping ice off of the driveway, so it’s not like I’m sitting up on a throne demanding things to be done “properly”, without any experience.

“Dance, Dance, Dance” from Greatest Hits 1974-78 by Steve Miller Band

Comments

7 responses to “Slip-Sliding Away”

  1. entropydevice Avatar
    entropydevice

    My landlord only puts down salt and shovels the area around my building on weekdays. On weekends, everything gets wonderfully icey.

    Even better, the top few steps of each flight of stairs on my fire escape get coated with ice. Because I had to do laundry today, and wanted to not kill myself in the process, I finally went out with a broom handle and chipped a lot of it off.

    Of course, the stairs to the basement are still coated with 1/4-1/2″ of ice each, so actually gettiny my laundry back out should be interesting.

    Reply
  2. stormwynd Avatar
    stormwynd

    There are many things I miss about Minneapolis, but snow and ice removal duty isn’t one of them. Every morning after a snowfall, my dad would roust me from bed half an hour early so I could shovel the driveway. Blef.

    And I did catch the WoW/D&D pun. ;-)

    Reply
  3. irilyth Avatar
    irilyth

    Who has to shovel in front of rental property? I assumed it was tenants, but maybe not. (I don’t remember from when I was renting here twelve years ago; the place Amy and I were renting a year ago was in a big building, and they hired people who did a pretty good job.)

    Reply
  4. jdh92 Avatar
    jdh92

    From my own experience it varies, but it’s usually spelled out in the lease.

    Reply
  5. gerbilicious85 Avatar
    gerbilicious85

    Yeah, usually spelled out in the lease or a rider I think. It probably depends a lot on the type of building: When you rent a house, you probably have to do it yourself but when we lived in a complex of 12 rows of townhouses with a shared driveway/parking lot, the deal was that he would have the landscaping company go down the driveway with a snowplow (so you still have to dig out your car, but at least you have somewhere to take it) and shovel/salt the shared sidewalks, but individual units are responsible for their own patios and the bits of sidewalk between patio and shared sidewalk. Actually, I’m not sure about that last even. I think he just prioritized the tasks in such a way that tenants did have to do some work if they wanted to have clear sidewalks right away. So, driveway done as quickly as necessary, then the back sidewalks so the garbage collectors can get through, then everything else, including part of people’s patios, but that could be late Monday morning for a weekend snowfall, so we would collectively clear a path from our units to our cars.

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  6. gerbilicious85 Avatar
    gerbilicious85

    I see that if I were to buy some Keen boots, I’d be forced to buy them in men’s sizes…

    Reply
  7. ruthling Avatar
    ruthling

    I’d been giving my neighbors a bit of slack considering the consistency of the stuff was concrete-like almost instantly. But those who plowed the driveway *onto* and across the sidewalk deserve to be slapped upside the head with one of the ice bricks I removed from the car.

    Today I’ve heard a lot of scraping and chipping in the above-freezing conditions. I hope this means my walk to the T will be easier Tuesday. I still have yak tracks, too.

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