Now that the whole “hoverboard” craze has finally died out — thanks in no small part to the habit the cheaply-made rideable gadgets have of bursting into flames — we can sit back and appreciate the very small number of situations in which they are actually useful. This hoverboard owner from Wisconsin has discovered that, with a talented pilot on board, the two-wheeled contraptions make a fine snowplow substitute.
With a shovel and plenty of warm winter gear equipped, this hoverboard rider shows that high-speed shoveling might be one of the best uses for the device. He quickly speeds up and down a driveway, angling his shovel to push the snow out of the way, much like a vehicle-based plow clears a roadway. It seems to work fairly well, though it’s very clear that the rider has done this before, and you can imagine a beginning would probably end up flat on their back with a broken tailbone.
The key to making this whole thing work is that the snow itself is the light, dry, fluffy kind, rather than the thick, “packing” kind of snow you get after it’s been sitting in the sun for a few hours. Timing is key here, and it’s hard to imagine the hoverboard having enough torque to push the thicker snow out of the way with as much ease.
Posted on YouTube by Steve Scherer, the video was shot in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. As a fellow Wisconsinite, I spent the weekend shoveling and plowing my driveway and sidewalk so that my vehicles weren’t swallowed by old man winter. Apparently I could have just used a hoverboard and gotten the job done just as quickly.
