A Miner's Workout

I never got around to flipping tires tonight. As I've stated before, I'm a miner, a surface miner to be precise, and over the years I've spent a lot of time with the most primitive tools of this occupation, namely shovels of all types, sledgehammers, wheelbarrows, picks, and all sorts of steel bars that poke, drive and pry, both short and long and always heavy. Not to detract from what the guy in this video is demonstrating, but having done this type of activity for a living for almost a quarter of a century, I can think of better ways to get some exercise.

Tonight, for instance, I spent eight hours on the "poor man's backhoe", cleaning up spillage underneath a conveyor belt that literally stretches for almost a half-mile. Shoveling rock and stonedust, and lifting large rocks which had fallen off the belt, I sweated my way through tonight's 3-11 shift, all the while thinking of how good that cold beer was going to taste when I got home! Nowadays, I spend more time on giant-sized equipment such as Caterpillar loaders and haul trucks, but if I had to count the number of shovelfuls of material I've scooped up over the years, the count would be in the high tens of thousands. Conveyor belts and handling systems are never spillage free, and someone is always needed to clean the mess. I could tell you about the plugs that I've freed up, but I will spare you the boring details only to say that a workout which sets a sledgehammer and bar versus a rock plug is much less appealing than time in the gym doing squats and biceps curls.

I'll get back to the tire flipping at a later time. I think the guy in the video would have been happy with my performance tonight.