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.