Huge Snowstorm
I had originally planned on writing about Jiu Jitsu Attention in today's social web but that will have to wait for another day. A MONSTROUS snow storm hit overnight. What struck me as the most definitive feature of this storm was the the terrific rate of snow fall.
The maximum snow fall was 4inches/hour. That's bizarre even for a blizzard. I passed out last night with only the lightest of dustings, but awoke to over two feet of snow with larger drifts.
I was called to action this morning (snow get's me fired up), while my fiance Michelle stayed indoors. Digging out of a snowstorm is my job, and I really enjoy the exercise. First I dug out around our cars and the steps. Then cleared an area in the side yard for our dogs to go outside. The fence to the backyard was closed in by a drift, and was a challenge to get to and open. Both of the dogs were stoked about their first snowfall, and they ran around in the narrow channels I dug for them.
Lazy doesn't translate to smart, but re-educated me in basic physics
The WALL is a massive hill of hard snow that the plows create when cleaning the streets, and digging it out always takes longer than the rest of the driveway, and is more intense. Of course I tried short cutting the intense labor of digging out the WALL. I rammed my 4WD Xterra backwards at a few miles per hour and lifted it off the ground, which lead to 4 spinning wheels. Another half hour of shoveling snow from under the car to the sides (shoveling and lying down don't mix), and slowly crawling it forwards, reminded me of an important lesson in basic physics. The traction force is a function of the weight of the car multiplied by the coefficient of friction. When all the wheels were no longer supporting the weight, the frictional force they contributed was negligible. After digging out the truck, I spent another 45 minutes digging out the rest of the WALL. DIG... DIG... DIG!
I thought about punching Bing Crosby in the nose only once while digging this morning, and I consider that an accomplishment.