Blizzard conditions

This past weekend another blizzard hit the cities.  Hard.  As in it took us over 2 hours to drive from the western part of Minneapolis back to our home- a drive that usually takes us 25 minutes.  But most of that time was spent outside of our vehicle, helping push other cars out of snow banks.  It took us at least 30 minutes to push our friend Deb's Prius down her alley.  It would have probably been easier for us to just pick the little thing up and carry it.  But we got it there with the help of some pretty fabulous 11 year old boys.  Eli was totally game even though he was still in his ski boots, had no mittens on, and was duct-taped into a pair of my pants.  Don't ask why he was duct-taped into my pants.  It had something to do with his intolerance of wearing snowpants inside.  Anyway- there he was, in this crazy outfit, putting some serious shoulder into the prius with a sweet grin on his face.  We got Deb's car packed into the garage, left Theo there for an overnight (in her house, not her garage) and drove one whole block before we stopped again to help a woman try to get her car up a steep little hill into her apartment parking lot.  It started with just Jon, Eli, Ildar, and I, plus one stranger.  He snuck away after 15 minutes had netted us 2 feet of forward movement, but soon we had 3 other strangers pull over and give it some muscle.  It took at least another 45 minutes to get that sucker into a parking spot, but we did it with one final triumphant push, then high fives all around, huge thanks from the car owner, and we were all gone- dispersed back out into the storm.  That's what blizzard conditions will do.  It will afford complete strangers the opportunity to pull over from their busy lives, put some shoulder into someone else's problem, smack some high fives, then get back on our own treadmills- perhaps a little sore in the muscles, but also a little more confident in the knowledge that there are people out there willing to help when you're in a fix.

We saw a couple more cars stuck on our last mile home, but several of us were desperate for a toilet break and we knew we still had our alley ahead of us.  Luckily Jon had perfected the manic-shovel by then so our alley was conquered in just a few minutes.  Eli then scaled the back steps, blustered his way through a drift that came up to his chin, and crashed into the house, doing a hilarious dance while I tried to release him from his duct-tape belt in time for him to get to the bathroom.  He made it.  Barely.