Snow Day

Today started normally, except for all the spinning tires and horns I heard through the night.

I got up, got KwandongAlex ready for daycare and we went out the door. My plan was to take him to daycare, then go to the health club for an hour or so and get ready for work. Passing all those cars stuck in deep snow made me feel the health club part was a little ridiculous - similar to the ride an elevator-drive a car- ride an elevator to exercise routine that many follow.

So, I dropped off the little guy, went back to my apartment, hung up my jacket and backpack of exercise gear and picked up a shovel.

Here is how deep the snow was.


That's more snow than we normally get in a year.

Anyway, the big problem with parking lots and snow is there is no place to put the snow. I helped a guy clear a route for his car by blocking in another car. Once his car was out of the way, I began digging out the doubly-snowed in car. Happily, he told me he wasn't driving today.

I moved a lot of snow; from the sidewalk, from emergency exits and from the parking lot. Finally, the only thing that could replace me arrived and I went home to relax.
This was better than the health club for a full-body workout. Still, the machines and weights at the club offer measurable amounts of exercise. What do I do now, slowly graduate from shovel to bigger shovel to bigger shovel?

Its weird, but I still feel I should go to the club - I may this afternoon and run, if nothing else. Once I returned home, I found that my university has declared a snow-day and so I have no classes this afternoon.

I'm not exactly fishing for compliments here; a coworker was flabbergasted that I would shovel stranger's cars out with, and for, them*. They aren't complete strangers as we share an apartment building and some of them were clearly older than I; surely anyone with the time would help. Wouldn't they?
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*I don't think the co-worker reads my blog and so doesn't know my feelings about traffic and automobiles and the like. I guess from that point, it is a little strange me helping drivers. The contradiction is similar to my doing volunteer work, teaching ESL, at a local church. I'm a complicated man.