MARQUETTE, MICH. -- If you had to wait for a Zamboni driver to clear all of Lake Superior before you could hop on the ice for a pick-up game, you’d be sitting in your skates for nearly 700 years.

That’s the conclusion made by the folks at U.P. Supply Co., a Marquette-based company specializing in Upper Peninsula gear and creative promotion of U.P. pride.

This week the company posed the question “How long would it take to Zamboni an entirely frozen Lake Superior?," and then unpacked the math in a blog post on the company’s website.

As of today Lake Superior ice cover is 8% ahead of where it was in 1996, the only year it reached 100% ice cover in the... Posted by Upper Peninsula Supply Co. on Monday, February 25, 2019

For several years the question has been on the mind of company founder and self-described U.P. ambassador Bugsy Sailor, who grew up playing hockey along Lake Superior.

“I’m obsessed with the lake and the size of it, and I think there’s a sense that when we see it every day, we take it for granted,” he said. “We lose that perspective of just how big it really is.”

Sailor originally posed the question on social media a few years ago, but this year, given Superior’s unusually high percentage of ice cover (the lake is currently more than 75 percent frozen; the average this time of year is 44 percent), he decided it was time to do the math.

“It’s pretty simple math, really,” Sailor said. “A matter of some basic conversions.”

After accounting for size, the hardest calculation was time, Sailor said. The conservative estimate for resurfacing all of Lake Superior came out to 693 years -- but when you account for variables like Zamboni repairs, switching out drivers, and perhaps pausing for a quick pick-up game, the actual time estimate would be much longer.

The Zamboni Lake Superior equation is just the latest creative take on Upper Peninsula love from U.P. Supply Co., which has made a name for itself over the past decade with its fun promotions of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

Sailor and his U.P. Supply Co. crew are also behind the increasingly popular tradition of 906 Day -- a celebration of all things U.P. on September 6 each year, inspired by the region’s singular area code -- and they particularly enjoy a good U.P.-themed April Fool’s joke. (Previous pranks have included launching the online dating site Yooper Singles, as well as announcing breaking ground in Lansing for an official Upper Peninsula embassy -- in a log cabin, of course.)

So what will be the company’s next great brainstorm? Sailor wouldn’t directly answer the question, but the smile was audible in his voice.

“We’re always trying to find clever ideas to represent the U.P.,” Sailor said. “We’re always working on something behind the scenes that no one really know about yet.”