So much for that idea...

So much for my nice, relaxing trip to the cabin! Got out there around 8:30 last night to find the (very steep) driveway at least 6" deep in sleet, with perhaps half an inch of powder on top. No way I was driving down there, so I parked up on the street. Not only was the driveway impassable, but the cover to the little "well" housing the water shut-off was under at least a foot of drifted sleet! After spending about 15 minutes chipping away at it with the water key (the handle for turning the water on & off), I decided to wait until this morning, when I'd have daylight and less cold. I did get the place warmed up in fairly short order, but wished I could do better than bottled water for washing (after first Ruddigore, then the sleet chipping, a nice, hot shower would have been lovely!).

After breakfast, I first tried to go down to the "basement" under the addition to look for a shovel but never got there. I got about halfway down the slope; at the point where it gets steeper, my feet slid out from under me and rather than risk injury by trying to get the rest of the way down, I decided it would be the better part of valor simply to borrow a shovel from the next-door neighbors. Pity there was no one with a camera to capture my crawling back up the hill - might have made some decent money selling the video to America's Funniest or some such show.

The neighbors loaned me both a shovel and a maul. The latter was heavy and I took it mostly to be polite, but was soon happy to have it, as it was just the thing to break up the drifted sleet - a few good whacks and I'd separate another chunk from the mass keeping me from accessing the water shut-off. After close to an hour's work, I finally managed to get at the cover and turn the water on. Nothing. Not a hiss, not a fizz, not a gurgle. I went back inside and called the Homeowners' association folks, who had someone out to check the situation within no more than 15 minutes or so. After half an hour spent confirming that the water hadn't been shut off at the street and fiddling with the shut-off, Art determined that a pipe running from the shut-off into the house was probably frozen. He lent me a hair dryer, even positioned it for me and told me to return it later, but over half an hour of that yielded no results. Sigh.

So after taking care of some other things (like hauling blinds and curtain rods in from the car), I came back home, having installed not one blind or curtain rod, and resigned to the fact that there's no point in going back out there until things have thawed out. And when I do, I'm afraid I may have to spend a night in a hotel while I wait for a plumber to come out and fix whatever pipe(s) have frozen.

Ah, the "joys" of second-home-ownership.