Sena bought me a bigger snow plow shovel because we’re getting a fair amount of snow lately. I’ll try it out tomorrow because we’ll be getting a couple of inches or so starting tonight.
The new snow plow shovel is 48 inches wide. The one she got last year was 36 inches wide. We have 6-foot-wide sidewalks (really a trail) and with the driveway, it’s kind of a chore.
I never checked out the maker’s website until today. The About Us section indicates they are based in Iowa, starting in 1996. The company name is JM Enterprises, hence the website name jmenterprisesdotcom. All the materials are made in the U.S.A. but I couldn’t see what city they’re based in. Another interesting thing about the website is that they have a link to The Farmer’s Almanac, which I clicked on and from there found out that there are two versions of The Farmer’s Almanac—I guess.
The one called just The Farmer’s Almanac is going to stop publishing soon. The Old Farmer’s Almanac is not going to stop publishing.
It makes me wonder if the Snow Plow company will switch to displaying a link to The Old Farmer’s Almanac.
The other nice thing about the web site is the Shovel Safety page. Bob Vila recommends their snow pushers. The guidance for snow removal using both snow pushers and scoop shovels sounds like solid common sense. It’s another feather in Iowa’s cap.
We got about 9 inches of snow over the weekend and we’re set to get a few more inches today. People have to work pretty hard to get the snow off their sidewalks because Iowa City has some pretty strict rules about it. If you don’t get that snow removed from your sidewalk “down to the concrete” the city will do it for you—for a stiff price.
You got 24 hours’ notice for your first violation. If you don’t get it done in 24 hours, the city will fine you a penalty of however much it costs to remove the snow plus a $100 administrative fee.
You’ll be glad to know there’s a way to prevent this from happening to you. All you need to do is contact Bigfoot Snow Removal Service. They don’t have a phone number because they don’t technically exist, but that’s only what the city will tell you.
Bigfoot Snow Removal does not have a telephone connection nor a website but there’s a way to get around that. All you need to do is find a big stick and knock really hard on a nearby tree. You have to knock 3 times just like Tony Orlando and Dawn sang the song and do it like you mean it.
Then grab a big bucket and fill it up with a lot of meat. Beef jerky is good but if you don’t have it, use anything you got on hand, even Wagyu beef. I can’t help it if you paid a lot of money for it, just be glad you can get it in America. Even though 10 pounds of it can set you back over $1000, just keep thinking about how much the city will charge you to clear your sidewalk.
Set the bucket of Wagyu or whatever out in your front yard. You can set up a critter cam if you want to make sure it’s Bigfoot fetching it and not your neighbor. However, it’s only fair to warn you that because Bigfoot is an interdimensional creature (that’s why nobody’s ever found fossils or seen baby Bigfoots) you’ll never capture any footage of Bigfoot. Oh, people pass off amateur videos claiming Bigfoot posed for them and you’ll see them on TV shows, but that’s just a government plot to distract you from the price of Wagyu beef.
The nice thing about Bigfoot Snow Removal is that they bring their own snow shovels. None of them have snow blowers because they would have to go to the hardware store and buy them. That would just cause a panic because people would faint and have to go to the emergency room and then Bigfoot hunters would start setting traps, looking for tracks and making plaster casts of them which invariably turn out to be bear or collecting animal poop that is always from raccoons, playing practical jokes and whatnot.
Well, the snow kept coming down. I had to go back out to shovel. I was going to use my plow shovel, but Sena said I was too chicken to try the electric snow shovel.
I couldn’t back down.
So, I had to go out there, after the wind had changed mind you, and use the battery powered shovel. I got snow all over me because no matter what I did to adjust the snow deflectors, the snow just blew back in my face.
We got a real snowfall starting last night and into this morning. Sena took the Voltask battery-powered 48V 16-inch snow shovel out and put it through its paces.
We got about 6 inches of snow and it chewed right through it. It threw the snow into the next county! It took her about 30 minutes to make my job a lot easier with the shovel.
We finally got enough snow to test the new shovels today. Recall we have a cordless electric snow shovel and a snow pusher plow shovel with a 36-inch blade. The battery-powered model is a 48V 16-inch Voltask.
I was a little surprised to learn how powerful the electric shovel is. It comes with two batteries. It has a safety button which you have to press at the same time you pull the trigger. It comes with lights so if you ever want to clear snow after dark, you could do that. Of course, there’s no heavy lifting and it’s easy to push. It can throw snow a long way and you can also direct it left or right. It’s like a vacuum in reverse.
Sena selected the Voltask and save a lot of money. There were other models that were priced in the 400–500-dollar range which didn’t have the features the Voltask has.
The snow plow of course, is a simple tool—just the way I like them. The narrow 36-inch blade makes snow clearing quick and there is also no heavy lifting. Spraying a little snow and ice repellent on the blade cuts down on buildup as you work.
We’re waiting for the next snowfall. We’ve had a couple of light ones so far and we used shovels to clear our driveway and sidewalk. They didn’t amount to much, but we’ll get a heavy snow here pretty soon.
We’ve been using shovels for years. I’m aware of the risks for heart attacks in certain people, especially sedentary middle age and older men with pre-existing cardiac risk factors. I’m not keen on snowblowers, mostly because I like to shovel.
I’ve been using an ergonomic shovel for years, although the wrong way until about 4 years ago. I used to throw snow over my shoulder while twisting my back. Now I push snow with a shovel that has a smaller bucket or with a snow pusher with a shallow, narrow blade. I lift by keeping my back straight and bending at the knees, flipping the small load out. I take my time.
I don’t know how high my heart rate gets while I shovel. I exercise 3-4 days a week. I warm up by juggling. I do floor yoga with bending and stretching, bodyweight squats, one leg sit to stand, use the step platform, dumbbells and planks. When I’m on the exercise bike, I keep my heart rate around 140 bpm, and below the maximum rate for my age, which is 150 bpm.
I’m aware of the recommendations to avoid shoveling snow based on the relevant studies. I realize I’m way past the age when experts recommend giving the snow shovel to someone else.
The question is who would that be? There aren’t any kids in the neighborhood offering to clear snow. Maybe they’re too busy dumb scrolling. I’m also aware of the city ordinance on clearing your driveway after a big snow. They’re very clear, at least in Whereon, Iowa.
“The city of Whereon requires every homeowner to clear snow from sidewalks within 24 hours after a snowfall. This means you. If you fail in your civic duty to clear snow and ice from your walkway within the allotted time of 10 minutes, the city will lawfully slap you with a fine of $3,000,000 and throw your dusty butt in jail for an indeterminant time that likely will extend beyond the winter season and could be for the rest of your natural life and even beyond, your corpse rotting in your cell, which will not bother the guards one iota because of the new state law mandating removal of their olfactory organs. Hahahahaha!!”
In light of the strict laws, Sena ordered a couple of new snow removal tools. Neither one of them is a snow blower. I think it’s fair to point out that some cardiologists have reservations even about snowblowers:
There are even studies that show an increased risk for heart attacks among people using automatic snow blowers. Similar to the extra exertion of pushing shovel, pushing a snow blower can raise heart rate and blood pressure quickly–from “Snow Shoveling can be hazardous to your health” article above.
One of them is a simple snow pusher with a 36-inch narrow blade. That’s for me. The other is a cordless, battery powered snow shovel that looks like a toy for Sena. The ad for that tool includes a short video of an attractive woman wearing skinny jeans and her stylish coat open revealing her svelte figure while demonstrating how the electric shovel works. It appears to remove bread slice sized pieces of snow from the top of a layer which stubbornly sticks to the pavement. Call the Whereon snow police.
We should be getting both tools before the next big snow.
Iowa City has web pages for the rules on snow removal by the city plows and by residents.
You can see the pdf of the map for residential street priorities for snow removal.
Shoveling snow or using a heavy snow blower can be hazardous to your health. There is guidance from the National Safety Council about how to remove snow. On the other hand, there are definite rules about clearing snow from your sidewalk.
There are no rules against juggling snowballs that I know of.
I was out shoveling snow this morning in the subzero temperatures. It’s getting down to 20 and 30 degrees below zero with the wind chills today and tomorrow—and likely beyond. Try to keep your buns warm in weather like that. Sena helped by making hot cocoa when I came in for a break. Little things like that make a big difference. Like many other people in the country, we’re getting out despite the wind chill warnings. There are a couple of reasons for that. None of us want our neighbors falling on our sidewalks. The other reason is that you look for just about any kind of a break from the indoor routine caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, part of which is the TV show lineup.
On the other hand, I get a kick out of the Ancient Aliens program. Last night, William Shatner, the Star Trek star who has his own show about the weird and wonderful, UnXplained. He sat at the head of a table lined by a group of Ancient Aliens heavy hitters, along with video guest stars including physicist Michio Kaku. I think Shatner was playing the role of devil’s advocate, apparently trying to argue against the idea that aliens are driving their UFOs recklessly around our planet while intoxicated on oregano, crashing them on the Weather Channel’s Highway 401 in British Columbia, forcing the Heavy Rescue crews to pull them out of ditches using 65-ton rotators (which look like they’re from another planet, by the way) and occasionally kidnapping various humans for the odd anal probing.
Anyway, I suspect Shatner was playfully provocative and this got the Ancient Alien crew to talking loudly and rapidly all at once, interrupting each other and challenging Shatner to a knife fight and whatnot. Just kidding; they were all very polite and respectful.
Me at the Star Trek Museum in Riverside, Iowa in 2016
I think it’s possible to take the Ancient Aliens show too seriously. I really wondered why Shatner was invited as a guest on Ancient Aliens. Maybe they don’t take themselves as seriously as some people think. Well, OK, they probably do.
In fact, I don’t think Shatner takes his own show, The UnXplained, seriously. I wonder if the title of the show is a sort of jab at the X-Files? Remember the 1999 episode, “The Unnatural”? Josh Exley (played by Jesse Martin) was an alien who took the form of an alien and was an excellent baseball player. He hid among an all-African American baseball team in Roswell in the 1940s but was executed by an alien bounty hunter who didn’t want him mixing with the human race. Think about that irony. The episode was warmly comical and at times, even poked fun at the preoccupation with alien invasions. I actually liked Jesse Martin’s version of the gospel song “Come and Go with Me to That Land.” There is no full version of it, but I also liked Sam Cooke’s rendition. Sena and I both really enjoyed watching the X-Files while eating popcorn. I treasure the memory.
Well, the sun is shining and it has finally almost stopped snowing. I have to go back out and finish shoveling.
We got more snow last night. Our neighbor really helped us out and cleaned up our driveway and more with his snowblower! Sena joked with him, “You don’t have to do that, we’re shovel people!”
I guess because we had a little less shoveling to do, thanks to our neighbor, Sena got inspired to build a—snow alien. Not a snow man but a Snow alien. Don’t ask me why. Maybe it has something to do with me watching Men in Black movies every other week.
I got the camera out. A couple of the neighbors who were out shoveling noticed her. I tried to act casual. I even helped—a little. We didn’t have any coals for eyes, no hat, no scarf, and she settled for a few shrub branches.
We got walloped by that blizzard I mentioned yesterday. It left about 5-8 inches at least with a gift mountain about waist high on one side of our driveway left by one of the city plows. Later in the day another plow gifted us another driveway plug, not as tall but wetter and heavier.
This morning we shoveled hard and it must have showed. Three of our neighbors came over with their snow blowers to help dig us out. We were very grateful for their kindness. One of them must have been up before 5 AM to get started. Another powered her way through a good chunk of our driveway. Yet a third neighbor helped clear the gift mountain and more.
I think I may have got in the way a few times because I felt a little guilty about them doing so much work with their machines. I felt compelled to sneak in and scoop something because I felt terrible just standing there watching them.
In the afternoon we had to get back outside to clear the second driveway plug left by the second city plow. Our driveway had drifted in about to my hips. It took us a while to dig out.
Some have speculated about whether shovel people take unfair advantage of the generosity of snow blower people. After all, we tend to look kind of pathetic, so they probably take pity on us.
There might be an expectation in some neighborhoods for snow blower people to contribute to the community by being willing to go the extra mile and clear driveways for shovel people. I could find only one serious article on the internet about this, “Is There a Social Code for Snow Removal?” on the Scientific American web site.
I’ve not heard of shovel people coming to help snow blower people, but it happened this afternoon. After Sena and I cleared our snowdrifts, we visited the three neighbors who helped us this morning and scooped out their driveway snow plugs and a little more when we could.
Go Retire Psychiatrist 