Upper body conditioning

As a skier, my legs are always strong and it's my upper body muscles that always tend to lag behind. Sure, there's always the occasional “yard work” the rest of the year that makes me use a pick ax or some earth moving implement, but that's quite limited. Winter instead brings snowfalls and the shoveling that goes with it; this past weekend was no exception, with a whopping 20 inches that had to be moved around the house and at some other location. Just like on Christmas Day 2008, yesterday's was some of these powerful storms we sometime get to unequivocally place the beginning of snow season on the calendar and get our little ski town economy started.

The snow we received was not the fluffy, ethereal white stuff we generally get, and that is the hallmark of Utah. That one was quite dense and constituted a serious work-out. We started early in the morning, I found the time to go skiing in Deer Valley in the afternoon and returned home to remove more snow; no wonder that, shortly after dinner, I almost fell asleep on the sofa while reading a pretty good book. The bonus was an almost perfect night sleep like I no longer get these days. Boy, this kind of exhaustion is decidedly soothing; I can use more of these giant snow dumps!