Eighteen

When the snow first started falling, last November, the same thought went through my head as it does every year: will we get much snow this season?

I ask myself this question because I still use a shovel to clear out my driveway. I told myself that I'd remove the snow from my laneway this way for as long as I am able to do so, and despite my growing arthritis in my knees, hips, and shoulders, I'm still able to throw a shovel full of the white stuff.

Even when the snow is heavy, though it takes me longer.

Since the snow fell in November, we've see a fair share of accumulation. But for a lark, when I cleared the driveway for that first time, I curiously wondered how many times I would have to shovel snow and I decided that I would actually keep tabs.

I started counting each time I headed outside with shovel in hand. I shovel the driveway every time there's a solid covering of snow or if there are patches that are more than one centimetre thick.

I don't like driving over the snow and packing it down on the pavement. It makes it harder to clear off, causing me to scrape my shovel a few times to lift the snow up, and that's hard on my shoulders.

We've had significant amounts of snowfall; so much, that I've had to head out every few hours to ensure that the snow doesn't get too deep. I also have to return to the driveway after a snow plow has sealed us in.

At the time of writing this post, I've been outside 22 times to clear the snow away. Before the rain and warm weather came, the snowbanks were already getting as tall as they can in a full season.

Right now, the streets are clear and the snowbanks have melted down, ready to give us nearly a fresh start for when the snow returns, perhaps even today or tomorrow.

On my eighteenth time of going out, a couple of weeks ago, the snow was pretty easy to clear: there were only a couple of centimetres of coverage on that day and the weather was cold, so the snow was light. I knew it would only take me about 15 minutes, if not less time, to get the job done.

For fun, I clamped my Insta360 camera to the shaft of the shovel and let it run while I did my job. I wanted to see how a recording like this would turn out.

One of the great things about the camera is that no matter how I held the shovel, the camera maintained the horizon. Even when I turned the shovel upside-down to scrape the snow out from under the car or to pull the snow off the front porch, the video was always right-side up.

In post-production editing, I sped up the video as much as six times the normal speed to make the video entertaining. I also changed the focus point a couple of times so that the camera wasn't just staring at the blade of the shovel.

In all, the video was shortened to just over a minute. I added titles, some music, and voila: here's the final product.

My eighteenth time of shovelling the driveway is held in time. We're not even halfway into the season and I've already done this job 22 times.

Perhaps, next autumn, I'll invest in an electric snow blower. But for now, I'll keep on shovelling.

Happy shovelling... I mean, happy Wednesday!