Tamping and the Electric Pole.

(Okay I kinda wrote this post before the backhoe tire was fixed, but then I forgot about it, and then I was all like, shit, I never posted that!? So here you go. A story from when we didn't have 20in of snow.) 

So today, we reached the dizzying high crest of 42 degrees. Shocking I know. So we decided it was finally time to finish tamping the dirt down around the electric pole we put in so that we could get electric service to the house.

Because you kinda need electricity.

Unless you are one of them back to the land hippie backwoods type folks that shun our modern convinces like plumbing and electricity because jobs are for squares man. Except I can't live like that because I want to enjoy Internet and pooping from within the comfort and safety of my own house. That's just what houses are for right? I mean, that's what separates the noble house from the proud yet scary looking cabin.

Anyway.

So we get our giant metal pry bars with the blunt ends that we use for tamping and go at. Since you know, the backhoe has a flat tire, and also the ground is so wet that we couldn't even ride I bicycle over there without sinking like a doomed ship. So we grabbed our pry bars a shovel, and our foolish optimism and started in.

Everything seemed great at first, but it quickly dawned on us that we just spearing glory holes* in the earth, which is the consistency of burnt pudding. So then I come up with the super brilliant idea of using a board to even out the force. So I found a board and threw it into the mud and wailed on it.

Which promptly broke the board in half.

So then Scott comes up the idea to use a better board. Which worked great. All we did was pivot the board around the pole in the circle while we lifted our huge heavy ass pry bars and brought them down over and over again onto the board.

Which we only had to do, oh twice all the way around and then again by going across so that the area didn't look like a giant pie tin after all the pie pieces had been taken out.

But we did it!

Except now my arms feel like noodles and I am really aware that I am resting my wrists on the keyboard and that makes me keep missing certain letters because my arms have given up on life man.

So I think I am going to take some pain killers and go to bed drink alcohol and surf the Internet like a mindless worker bee until it's late enough to go to bed and not feel like a boring person.

So, good night dear readers, even though I shall not post till morning, never doubt that I love you. (In a totally platonic way of course.**)

*Yes I know what this means. Yes I went there. If you do not know what this means, for the love of all that is holy, DO NOT Google it. No. Don't. Trust me.

** Please don't stalk and murder me.

Moving the Wood Stove.

So yesterday we moved the second wood stove because there was snow. Okay, let me explain. No, there is too much, let me sum up.

So you remember that we put in a power pole near the house site so that we could get temporary power for installing the septic system and for running our cement mixer. Now, since the second older mobile home I have is for storage it doesn't really need power, we decided to run the power drop to the furnace shed right behind it, because that is a permanent structure that will become a garden shed since our old garden shed collapsed during a snow storm because nature is a bitch like that.

Which was a great plan, except for the fact that we still had the wood stove in the shed. Which we were going to have to move to the porch of the mobile home to await the day we can install it in the garage.

Well, how we got the stove over there was to sled it on a children's plastic sled. It worked once didn't it? It should work again right?

Ha ha haaa.

So we emptied everything we could have out of the stove and the shed, and then Scott got behind it and shoved while I lifted up on the front and then we pushed and shoved and cursed and fought the damn thing partway out the door. Then we found a sled, and then filled the bottom with wood and boards so that the stove would not just crush the sides of the sled out, and then we fought the thing onto the sled.

Then the fun begin.

What we had failed to take into account was that we were going uphill. And do you know what else was uphill?

If you guessed the giant pile of dirt we used to to put the electric pole in the ground, you would be right!

Preemptively I had a moment of foresight and had shoveled snow in front of the loose mound of dirt to try to make a ramp. Let me tell you something right now, trying to wrestle a giant metal wood stove that is precariously balanced on a sled that is filled with wood over a pile of dirt on the ground uphill is like trying to shove a dead baby elephant up a parking garage ramp.

And really, it's just about as bizarre.

Once we hit that dirt pile the sled came to a dead stop. We tried pushing and lifting on the front of the sled. We tried lifting the stove and pushing it. We tried switching places. We tired accusing each other of doing it wrong.* Finally Scott used his brain power and we turned the stove ninety to the sled, so that it was hanging off each side like whoa, tied a stronger rope to the front of the sled and tried again.

Have you ever watched one of those movies or read one of those books about the old timey arctic expeditions where the great ships would get stuck in the ice and then have to wait for the summer to become free again? You know the part where the ice begins to break up and shift and then the cold water is visible until at last one day the ship gives a great shuddering heave and breaks free of the ice and the crew rejoices because they are at last free of it?

It was like that. Only with a wood stove.

Once we felt it moving we pushed and pulled like mad until at last we had heaved and pushed and fought the dame thing up that goddamned motherfucking hill until at last we were on the level and could glide up to the door where we stopped and panted like winded racehorses.

I am also fairly sure that the neighbors think we are really, really insane now.

So then it was a simple matter of shoving it through the doorway and into it's storage spot. I would like to say that we high fived for victory then, but at that point I realized that it hurt to breathe in and that it felt like someone was punching me repeatedly between the shoulder blades. So we crawled back to the house and drank tea.

Victory tea.

*This is a necessity in any project.

The Culvert Pipe and the Electric Pole.

Of course the coming of the great electric guys meant that we had to do two things that day, install the culvert pipe we have only been meaning to install for like two years now, and take out the electric pole and prep it to be moved.

Easy right?

So we get the backhoe and then we get the culvert pipe and we began. Now of course once we dig a big trench in the driveway for the pipe we won't be able to drive across it. Which means if we don't dump enough gravel next to the hole we will be using the motherfucking wheelbarrow. It's kinda like one of those riddles where you, a fox, a dog, and a goat have to cross a river but the boat only holds two. And you can't leave the fox alone with the dog, or the dog alone with the goat.

The fox and the goat being metaphors for gravel and dirt, obviously.

We actually made a list of operations, to make sure that we didn't forget a step or strand a piece of equipment on the wrong side of the gulf and started in. First we filled King the Backhoes bucket with gravel, and dumped it on the far side of the soon to be trench. Then Scott pulled King up into the yard and dug out the trench, with me spotting him.

It took about, oh, twenty minutes, if that. Twenty minutes to do something that would have taken me two weeks everyday, of hand digging to do, if not more. Backhoes are fucking sweet is what I am saying.

Once the trench was deep enough, we cleared it out a bit with shovels, just getting the loose dirt and miscellaneous clay out of there. Of course once we had connected the trench to the ditch water had come pouring through, making this task a bit of a pain in the ass. Especially because the bottom of the trench looked solid but it wasn't. Of course I learned this by thinking I could just step on down in there and pick up a rock, only to sink up to my ankles in clay muck.

Luckily my boots were still on when I made it out.

Then we laid the pipe in, adjusted the fit, made sure the water was running through the pipe and not under it, rocked around the ends and then filled the trench back in with dirt and gravel. Then I had to go stand and watch the outflow pipe for awhile, because, you know.

Then we went inside for a cup of tea, to figure out how to remove our future electric pole. See, the pole had a light on it. And to power the light, there is a line going to the pole. A line we were going to have to cut. We had already flipped the breaker off for it, and tested it to make sure it was dead, because we are not stupid. Now we needed to cut the line off at the main pole. Which was going to take a extension ladder, at best. Now, I am afraid of heights like whoa. Yet, for the second time that day, a little light bulb came on.

Why don't I just go up in the backhoe bucket? Ken-inatractor did it, and he didn't die.

So we get King and turn him around and positioned him next to the pole and I climbed into the front bucket. My only explanation for this is I really, really want that house. So Scott turns it on and up I go.

I think I can safely say it was scary as shit. You know how when you are up high people say shit like 'don't look down?' Yeah, that doesn't help one bit, because I can still look out.

But I goddamned did it. Motherfuckers.

Then I came back down and threw myself at the earth. Then it was a simple matter of pulling the pole itself out of the ground. Which was fun.*

First off, we couldn't just put the chain around the pole and yank it out of the ground, because it was too tall and then we would have made a fulcrum point and it probably would have come down on top of the backhoe. Or the shed. Or me. So we had to put the chain on the pole, and then I worked it up the pole with a board while Scott gently raised the bucket until we had reached the middle and he could yank it up out of the ground.

Then I unhooked the chain and rolled it off the bucket and Scott drove off to dig the hole to place it in while I stripped the light off it. At that point we decided to call it a day because we had crammed about two days into one day and we were both tired as shit.

Then we went and drank beer and ate pizza.

The pizza and beer of VICTORY!

*It was not fun.