Teleidoscope

Sat, Dec 30, 2006

Shoveling

Posted at 1:43 pm MST to Technology

The first time my back went out badly enough to need actual medical care was a day after I had been shovelling snow. I did the classic lean over to pick something up off the coffee table, and something popped. That's about 18 years ago now.

The problem is actually with the iliosacral joint, and also my left hip. The actual shape of the left hip socket is not the same as the other one, and the right (or wrong) kind of stress can lever the joint out of position.

One of the things I did to try to protect my back after that first event was invest in one of the fancy snow shovels with the curvy handles and a light-weight plastic shovel part. It worked very well for about 15 years.

I never had back problems after shoveling with it, right up to the time the plastic shovel part broke when I was digging out after a spring storm that left unusually wet, heavy snow. At the time, I was not able to get another shovel with a curvy handle: it was so late in the season that the stores were selling spring gardening stuff. But I was able to buy an ordinary snow shovel with an aluminum blade and a straight handle. I got a new curvy-handled plastic shovel at the beginning of the next snow season.

I am very glad I did.

From my front door to the end of the driveway, where I usually leave my truck when I expect the snow to be drifty, is probably a bit over 150 feet. I have opened that path 3 times in the past week and a half: once after the first blizzard, once after the Christmas winds drifted the path closed, and now again today, after the latest blizzard.

I did part of my Boxing Day shoveling with the plain shovel, because I had made the mistake of leaving the good shovel in the truck. But I could feel it pulling at my back and hip, so once I was past the big drift that always forms near the house I waded out to the truck through the drifts and then shoveled my way back toward the house.

Today I spent about an hour shoveling the 1-shovel-width path from the house to the truck with the good shovel. (Done as two half-hour-ish bouts of shoveling, with a 15 minute break.) The biggest problem was trying to find where the old path had been, so that I was shoveling fluffy new drifted snow instead of crusty old snow.

I strongly recommend the shovels with curvy handles, even if (or maybe especially if) you only occasionally need to shovel.

The remaining mystery about these blizzards is... Why to the wild bunnies come up onto my porch and deck when it snows and leave tracks right up to my front door? I suppose it is possible they come up on the porch all the time, and I only notice when the snow comes from strange directions and shows their tracks. But I have never noticed rabbit tracks on the deck in previous years. They may have gotten brave while the house was empty, or they really like the new porch I had built last spring. (I can see dog tracks in the yard, too, but not on the porch or deck. Perhaps the dog won't follow the bunnies up onto a porch that isn't its home?)

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