Building Bridges (and not the Metaphorical Kind.)

Today we decided in order to get more house lumber, that we needed to build a bridge to access our far fields. Basically we have something that is not really a stream, but almost not really a drainage ditch to span. What was there was mostly buried plastic pipe that was slowly being eaten by the earth.

Basically, the lamest sarlacc ever.

Anywho our first step was to get King the backhoe, and head on down to the back where he made short work of digging out where the piping had been. It was at this point that I discovered two things. One that the previous owners, when faced with the original pipe sinking into the ground, had just placed a second pipe on top of the first one. Which was, I don't even know at this point. Especially because the second pipe was not really a pipe. I think it was one of those round fiberglass concrete molds. Anyway, it wasn't really intact anymore.

The second, and more alarming thing, was that we had just caused frog armageddon. My little amphibian friends must have been convinced that the world was ending. As the backhoe was working they were freaking out jumping around and flailing their limbs, possibly begging the God of Frogs to save them from this terrible fate and have mercy on the believers. Or maybe they were convinced that this was in retribution for sinning, like a frog version of Sodom and Gomorrah

At one point I think I shouted, “jump AWAY from the machine!” But they weren't having any of it.

So I was pretty convinced they were all dead.

Luckily, after we were done digging they reappeared. Looking very unhappy, and also muddy. And no I am not just making that up to make you feel better. They made it. After that we laid some cover down to keep the weeds at bay, and then we laid plywood down to make an even levelish surface for the railroad ties to go on. Then came the shitty part. Well, shitty for me. While Scott got to sit in the backhoe cab that was hotter then the surface of the sun, it was my job to use the lumber picker to grab a rail road tie, heave it up, wrap a chain around the middle and hook it to the bucket, signal Scott to go up, run over to the stream, scramble across the ditch, guide the thing into place while directing Scott, place it, take the chain off, physically pick up the end and shove the rail tie tight into the other ones and then run back over and start the thing all over again fourteen more times.

Yeah I know. It's tiring just to read it.

Needless to say I quit after that and Scott put the top boards on by his damn self. So tomorrow all we have to do is add some gravel because we didn't inset the bridge into the ground. So obviously if we want to drive shit over it we have to you know, make a ramp of some kind. Which of course means moving gravel around.

I also kinda think it would have looked better inset, but as Scott pointed out it's only a matter of time until it is because everything sinks into the earth here eventually anyway. Of course now that we are counting on it happening it never will and the bridge will probably find some way to eject itself from the earth and end up in some other county. Or space. 

Possibly from an explosion of some sort.

Or witches.

It could go either way, really.