Manual Snow Removal: An Olympic Sport?

The winter storm wasn't quite as severe as it could have been; in fact, it's no longer in effect, thus ending a day earlier than the original forecast. That is good.

Nevertheless, there was still quite a bit of snow to be moved away from the driveway. Both sides of the driveway, however, are five six or seven feet high already. Finding place to put all the new snow becomes that much more difficult.

Our main removal equipment is a bit scoop that is run along the ground to scoop up the snow, and then it is pushed and turned up or around to dump the snow in it. The scoop itself is almost like a sled. As long as the contents aren't too heavy, it isn't too difficult to make a run up a slope with it and dump the contents at the top.

As I was scooping, pushing, running, climbing, dumping; I wondered why this couldn't be an Olympic sport... After all, the more physically fit a person is, the longer they can go. It involves the whole body -- upper and lower. There's some tactics and finesse involves in figuring out how and where to dump the snow... Okay, so maybe all this is just strange and weird. It must be the cold I'm suffering from combined with the monotony of pushing around endless white stuff that got me thinking along these lines.

I heard that a boat sank in our harbor last week due to the weight of the snow. The weather is supposed to warm up tomorrow and rain is in the forecast for the week. Rain on existing snow makes for a lot of added weight. People are up on their roofs (particularly the asphalt shingle roofs, because they don't shed snow) shoveling off snow. We have mostly steep, metal roofs (they're meant for the snow and ice slide off), so I am not going up there.