My Wife, Son and I live in London, Ontario, Canada.  It is one of the greatest cities in the world!  However, it’s in the section of Southwestern Ontario it's considered “the snow belt”.  It’s situated about an hour from two of the five great lakes. Winds usually come from the west,  so during the winter, we often get HUGE dumpings of snow because of Lake Huron.  Should winds come from the south, we’d get a ton of snow because of Lake Erie.  We used to live in Edmonton, and if Wikipedia were to sum up that city in one word, it’d be this Although it’s a lot further north, the one word to describe Edmonton would not be “Snowy”!   Anyway, we were quickly reminded of London’s snowiness (is that a word?) with our first winter back in the city, and this season, we’ve had record amounts of snowfall!  Here is a view of our city skyline.   I’m kidding, that’s a lie, but THIS LONDON FORECAST FROM THE LONDON FREE PRESS NEWSPAPER IS NOT!:

  I’ve never owned a snow blower before, but my Wife and I broke down just before Christmas.  After what seemed like ENDLESS shoveling, I said to my wife, “Let’s return all of our presents for each other and buy one of these things.”  And she agreed.  We’re not rich, so I wanted to get an inexpensive one.   We bought this. When I was assembling the handle for it, I met a neighbour from across the street, named Barry (who is one of the best neighbours we’ve ever had!) and he is a SnowblowerAHOLIC!:

He not only does his neighbours driveways on either side of him, he practically does the WHOLE BLOCK!!  Honestly!  He's usually out there for more than an hour.  I’m almost as big of a snow blowing fan, but I keep to the neighbours on either side of me…  

Back to my machine… IT’S AWESOME!!  It cost about five hundred bucks at Home Depot and I’m convinced that it’s come right down from heaven.

Now is a perfect time to throw this in:

I highly recommend it.  Barry (who I initially thought had "the King of all snow blowers") was even impressed at how this little machine of mine throws the snow around!  Even after a FULL DAYs worth of a MAJOR DUMPING!
(I say that I initially thought he had snow blowing lovers DREAM, until I came across what is below.)

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 For those snow blowing enthusiasts out there, here’s what I find is the ULTIMATE WAY to clear my two car driveway.  I’ve studied the various methods people seem to be practicing.  There’s what I call the “Lawn Mower” method, where you simply go lengthwise from left to right, the “Zamboni” method where you start down the middle, go up one of the sides and then do O’s until completed, and then... well, there are people who seem to really not put any thought into it WHATSOEVER and sometimes throw snow BACK ON TO AN AREA THEY’VE ALREADY CLEARED!?!!  Anyhow, all of these methods require that you constantly change the direction in which you’re throwing snow, and really, that just takes time away from doing what is most enjoyable, chuckin’ the white stuff!   Here’s the plan:

Set your snow blower to throw to either side, it doesn’t matter, but set it to throw the furthest to start!  (Unless you have a Barry-like snow blower and that means the snow gets thrown a couple of subdivisions down.

Go straight down the middle of your driveway.

Then turn around, and go down the side that you’re throwing the snow to.

Then go down the other side, again, the side you’re throwing snow to.

Repeat, and then TA-DA!  It's a beautiful thing:

MY POINT ON SNOW BLOWING: AT LEAST BARRY AND I THINK WE'RE COOL!