Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Eat Snow and Die, Caveman

It's snowed a lot this season, which is especially bad for people with driveways. Now I don't want any Nunies to feel left out either by lack of driveway (or lack of snow), because I still softly slur a cuss word in your honour every time I watch the news and catch that 2 seconds where they flash the temperatures in, say, Arctic Bay.

But sheer volume of snow is a burden, and officially today it became a curse. Depicted here in this Novaesque diagram is the problem: the pile has finally achieved unity with my own height. Therefore shoveling newly fallen snow requires me to lift it above my head. Now I'm more of a cardio guy--I don't resistance train on my DELTOIDS-- so I can't quite do it, at least not enough times to put a dent in last night's dump. There are however two alternatives:
  1. Launch the scoop like a discus from waist height. 10% blows back in your face, and you eventually tear yourself in 'places.'
  2. Use one of those 'one horse open sleigh' shovels to shuttle loads over the mountain and in back behind the house.
Mom had a much more practical suggestion: "buy a SNOWBLOWER." As a self-respecting engineer, clearly the only solution is to fashion a 20-story parabolic mirror and harness the awesome power of the sun to beam away my snow berm.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Funny you should post that, I just came in from taking pictures of our snowbanks (we're in Gatineau). It's a darned good thing we had that thaw after the first big snows, or else I think the banks would be at the roof, except that not even the snowblower will pitch it that high.

Kennie said...

LOL - Oh Aleks, you keep me in stitches laughing. I swear a tad under my breath (or some times right out loud) every time I see the amount of snow that was dropped (or should I say "shat") on you guys down South.

I hope it ends sometime soon for you! And boy am I GLAD I don't have to do any shoveling this year .. I will gladly trade the snow for -40 ... although I wouldn't mind getting maybe a foot of snow up here so it isn't so rocky snowmobiling....