Winterizing Your Life Up North

In this episode of "Mike Dell's World," Mike Dell discusses the topic of "Getting Ready For Winter Up North." He starts with a humorous intro he found while digging through his files, reflecting on the absence of the Internet and video games during his childhood. Mike then dives into the essentials of winterizing for those living in northern climates, emphasizing the importance of preparing for below-freezing temperatures and snowfall. He mentions specific tasks such as winterizing campers by removing water and replacing it with edible antifreeze, which he explains should be flushed out in the spring. He continues by highlighting other important winter preparations, like placing snow shovels in accessible locations and ensuring ice scrapers and snow brushes are in vehicles for winter driving. He talks about getting snowblowers operational and servicing tractors, including changing fluids and preparing them for snow removal. Mike discusses the seasonal change of window air conditioners and reminds listeners to ensure their furnace filters are clean. He stresses the importance of checking propane and oil levels for heating and mentions that many people must also winterize boats and other equipment by running engines to remove water. In a light-hearted manner, Mike shares anecdotes about driveway markers to avoid losing track of the edges under snow and reminisces about the past when sand barrels helped drivers on the hills. He explains the need for snow tires and the 'summarizing' process that occurs in preparation for summer, such as changing oil for snowblowers and clearing debris. Throughout the episode, Mike shares personal stories, including the collapse of a portable garage due to heavy snow buildup, illustrating that even with preparation, unexpected challenges can arise. He concludes by noting that those who do not experience harsh winters may not have to deal with these kinds of winterization tasks. Finally, Mike teases the next episode's topic: the anniversary of the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, hinting that there is more to the story than just the famous song associated with it.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Mike Dell's World number four one five
for Monday,
11/09/2025.
When I was a young boy,
there wasn't any Internet.
There wasn't any World Wide Web.

(00:20):
There wasn't any
egghead sending you texts saying those are the
same thing. You don't have to say Internet
and World Wide Web. They're the
same thing. There weren't any video games when
I was a boy.
Well, there was Pac Man.
That was a game, I guess.
And Asteroids.
Wizard of War.

(00:42):
Scrambled. Defender was a hell of a lot
of fun.
Those were what we called
video games.
Did I say we didn't have video games?
Because that would have been a mistake.
But there is one thing you have now
that we didn't have when I was a
boy that I wish we did.

(01:03):
Like Dell's World.
That was a funny little intro that I
found
when digging through some of my files here,
so, why not throw it at the beginning
of this episode?
Anyway,
today we're gonna talk about
getting ready for winter,
or winterizing.

(01:24):
I know I talked about that a little
bit in a previous episode,
already this year, but,
they winterize the campers,
amongst other things. But
kinda, you know, when you live up north
here and,
you know, for part of the year, there's
below freezing temperatures

(01:44):
and snow and all the good stuff. So
there's usually kind of a a list of
things you need to get ready for.
And one of those things
is, you know, the campers. You know, you
gotta
get all the the the water out of
them and, replace it with some
antifreeze.
Not you know, you don't put antifreeze in

(02:04):
all the pipes and everything, but you run
the antifreeze through the pipes once you get
the clear water out of it.
And then in the spring, you have to
flush all that stuff out. It's edible antifreeze.
I wouldn't drink it out of the bottle,
but, anyway.
But there's a lot of other things that
you you might not think about.
You

(02:25):
know, getting the snow shovels,
put in strategic
locations and
putting
the ice scrapers and,
and snowbrushes
back in their vehicles.
You know, most vehicles
or most people around here,
put pull one in their vehicles. You know,

(02:45):
because you never know. Well, you do know
you're gonna get snow on your windshield and
side windows and you really need to clear
all that stuff off. So that's on the
list for winterizing.
You know, some of the other things is,
like, get the snowblower running or the snowblowers
running.
In my case, get the tractor

(03:05):
going. I'm gonna take the tractor out to
the dealership and have them do all the
fluids and make sure it's all ready to
go for winter.
You know, some of the other things, we
do around here, you know, we don't have
central air conditioning. So, you know, in my
studio
slash office,
building here, I've I've got a window air

(03:28):
conditioner. I take that out or cover it
up. They took it out,
and they go put it in the garage
and, you know, put the screen back in
the window just in case, you know, we
do get a warm day, I can at
least open the window.
But, you know, get that stuff done.
Get the, you know, in the house, took
out you know, we have two window air
conditioners,
and

(03:48):
I I take them out now. It's a
lot easier to to deal with.
But,
you know, make sure your furnace filter is
good,
all that stuff. You know, if you heat
with propane or oil, you know, make sure
you get a full tank.
Just a lot of that kind of stuff,
you know, boats. That's the other thing. You

(04:09):
know, I put away a couple of boats.
You know, you wanna run the engine so
the, you know, there's no water in the
engine,
and you wanna maybe fog it or whatever.
I just heard somebody bark. Is that the
dog?
Well, obviously, it was a dog.

(04:29):
Anyway,
you know, things like that.
You know, try to get the leaves out
of the yard or at least off the
driveway and off the walkways,
you know, because you don't wanna be
shoveling leaves with the snow or blowing leaves
with the snow.
You
know, a lot of people, they put,

(04:51):
markers on the edges of their driveways,
you know, little sticks that stick up above
the snowpack so you know where where the
driveway is.
You'd be surprised at, how easy it is
to lose the driveway,
especially out of my mom's house.
You know, she's got a pretty good ditch
at the end of her driveways.
And, you know, we mark that so that

(05:14):
when I'm plowing, I don't
accidentally
drive into the ditch
or
when you're driving the car, you know, you
just just need to know where the edges
of the of the driveway is.
Sometimes the,
the county and city road commission out here
will put

(05:35):
markers, you know, in in spots that tend
to drift.
They'll put markers along the, shoulder of the
road. Not right on the road, but way,
you know, to the edge of the shoulder.
So for the same reason, their snowplows will
know
where every you know, where the edge is.
They don't put them everywhere.
I remember back in the seventies,

(05:55):
we have a couple of really big hills
going out of town here,
those that are local. There's Brockway Hill,
going up 31
or is that Brockway? I don't know. We
don't call it that anymore, but,
there's like Green Hill and

(06:15):
Silver Lake Road. There's Front street that goes
turns into North Long Lake Road. That hill
come out of town. They used to put
these barrels.
They were big green barrels, and they would
fill them full of sand.
And that way if, you had trouble getting
up the hill, you could, go to one
of those barrels and grab some sand and

(06:37):
throw them under your tires. And they don't
do that so much anymore because so many
people have really good radial snow tires or
all wheel drive, four wheel drive.
It's a lot more common than it was
in the seventies to to have much better
tires,
and
that's,
that's a good thing. And speaking of tires,

(06:59):
you know, some some people have specific snow
tires they put on, so you gotta get
those switched over.
Either, you know, if you have your own
rims and put the snow tires on rims,
and then you have a second set of
rims for the summer.
But, you know, kinda gotta winterize the car.
And, you know, and and, conversely, believe it

(07:20):
or not, in the summer, and there's not
really a word for this, I call it
summarizing.
Like the snowblower and the tractor. I, you
know, I summarize
those.
Usually I'll change the oil and the
snowblower
and, you know, the the one that has
its own engine
and,

(07:40):
oh, fog it or put some,
sea foam or,
stable in the gas and top off the
gas and,
you know, try I, shut off the gas
and run it until it you know, the
carburetor doesn't have any gas in it because,
you know, you never know what kind of
crud you can have in there. And if
it's sitting all summer in the in the

(08:00):
baking sun,
you know, it's not good. So, you know,
you also have to
summarize things.
And the tractor, you know, we use the
tractor year round,
but take off the cab, take off the
snowblower
attachment,
and then put on the mower deck and,
you know, all the stuff that goes with

(08:21):
summer.
And, you know, just kind of that stuff.
Like I said, it's,
it is a subject around here. A lot
of people shrink-wrap their boats too, and there's
a whole business
around that
where they'll you know, if they're gonna store
the boat outside,
they'll

(08:42):
they'll put up, like,
wood,
posts and whatnot to hold the shrink-wrap off
of the interior of the boat, and then
they'll,
literally shrink-wrap the whole boat.
We used to do that with, one of
our boats, and, now now we got enough
room in the barn to put both in.
So
both boats go in the barn and we

(09:02):
don't have to do that. My mom also
has a
a little Volkswagen Beetle convertible and she doesn't
use that in the
winter.
So it's got a spot that we park
it and then put on the trickle charger
for the battery just to keep the battery
up. Either that or we'll take the battery
out, put it in the basement where it

(09:22):
doesn't freeze,
one way or the other,
and put stable in the gas and make
sure the gas
is full.
So lots of little things you got to
do to get ready for winter up here
in the North anyway. Now you know if
you live in Florida or
Tennessee or someplace that doesn't really get that

(09:44):
much winter,
there may not be so much of that
stuff.
You know, another thing we gotta do is,
you know, put away the yard furniture. You
know, we don't don't wanna leave the
you know, on the patio. We have a
a table and some chairs and an umbrella
and all that stuff, and, we usually pack
that away,
and get that out of the way because,

(10:05):
you know, when I'm
moving snow, you know, on the patio, I
just assume not have all that stuff in
the way and it doesn't really hurt the
stuff. It's outdoor furniture
and all snow is is frozen water. So,
you know, if it doesn't melt in the
rain, it's not gonna melt in the snow.
It's just not a good idea.
It's something around here that, I I have

(10:26):
a,
one of those
tent garage
things,
you know, those portable garages. Well, we have
one that's semi permanent,
behind our garage, and that's where we put
a lot of the stuff that we put
away for the winter.
We put it in there.
And last year, we got a lot more

(10:47):
snow than we normally would have got. So,
the tent that we had in the backyard,
the tent garage, portable garage thing,
one day just collapsed because snow had built
up on it and all of a sudden
it just went just imploded.
That was inconvenient as hell, but,
anyway, got all the stuff we needed to

(11:08):
get out of there and just left it.
And then,
we replaced it,
this summer. So
now on my checklist of things to do
is go knock the snow off of the
roof of the
storage
tent. So lesson learned,
but it's not a big deal to do.
My neighbor uses one of those as her

(11:30):
garage.
And, you know, just whenever she goes out
there and there's snow buildup on it, just
takes a push broom and
from inside and just, you know, hits it
a few times and the snow slides off
and, yeah, it's no problem. I didn't even
think about that
last year.

(11:51):
And, in fact, it was her. She came
over and
she
looks out there and she says, what happened
to your tent? I said, I don't know.
What happened to it? And I looked out
there, and oh my gosh.
So and what really sucked about it was,
we had some shovels
and brooms and stuff kinda leaning on the

(12:12):
wall, and it poked right up through the
the the roof. So that tent was garbage
anyway. It
absolutely mangled all the the structure of it.
But, yeah, it was
that was an adventure. So even if you
do think you're prepared, you might not be
prepared.
But
and again, like I said, if you live

(12:32):
somewhere where it doesn't snow like this or
doesn't get this cold, you probably don't have
to worry about it.
So, anyway, everybody have a great day. I
think,
tomorrow,
yeah, tomorrow
is the, anniversary
of the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.
So I think I'm gonna

(12:53):
talk about that.
Probably know about it because of the song
from Gordon Lightfoot, but, there's a lot more
to it than that.
Catch me later.