Stupid Boulders
At the end of the day yesterday, Hefé told me I would be working at another site. I was excited to get a change of scenery and looked forward to this morning.
When I arrived at the new site, I discovered to my dismay that two coworkers and I would be digging an eighty foot trench for a sewer line. Even though it all pays the same, some things still suck more than others, and digging a trench by hand on the side of a mountain is definitely one of the suckier.
The ground here is hard and full of rocks, nothing like the soft black gold beneath the feet of Midwesterners. Back home, you can almost always grab a shovel, step on it a little and dig a hole. Here, not so much.
The only way you can really use a shovel here to remove dirt is if you spend some time hammering on it with a pick axe. In itself, swinging a pick axe pretty much sucks, but toss in the fact that our “dirt” is riddled with various pebbles, rocks, and full-out boulders and you clearly have the makings for a long, painful, sucky day.
Our trench eventually needed to tie into the existing sewer lines, so we would go from level with the bottom of the foundation at one end, and about four feet deep on the other end. Needless to say, we had our work cut out for us.
As we hacked in the dirt for nine hours, we had plenty of time to contemplate life’s pressing mysteries. We were able to question such things as why in the world would Hefé allow us to collectively waste 27 hours of labor in place of renting a trencher, and why didn’t the excavator dig the trench when he dug the footings and foundation, and how in the world did we end up being the “Lucky Three” chosen for the task?
Despite enduring a task that clearly sucked, we didn’t grumble too much. We toughed our way through it and went home completely beat. I didn’t even want to lift my arms when I got home this evening. I weighed in at 169 pounds.
When I arrived at the new site, I discovered to my dismay that two coworkers and I would be digging an eighty foot trench for a sewer line. Even though it all pays the same, some things still suck more than others, and digging a trench by hand on the side of a mountain is definitely one of the suckier.
The ground here is hard and full of rocks, nothing like the soft black gold beneath the feet of Midwesterners. Back home, you can almost always grab a shovel, step on it a little and dig a hole. Here, not so much.
The only way you can really use a shovel here to remove dirt is if you spend some time hammering on it with a pick axe. In itself, swinging a pick axe pretty much sucks, but toss in the fact that our “dirt” is riddled with various pebbles, rocks, and full-out boulders and you clearly have the makings for a long, painful, sucky day.
Our trench eventually needed to tie into the existing sewer lines, so we would go from level with the bottom of the foundation at one end, and about four feet deep on the other end. Needless to say, we had our work cut out for us.
As we hacked in the dirt for nine hours, we had plenty of time to contemplate life’s pressing mysteries. We were able to question such things as why in the world would Hefé allow us to collectively waste 27 hours of labor in place of renting a trencher, and why didn’t the excavator dig the trench when he dug the footings and foundation, and how in the world did we end up being the “Lucky Three” chosen for the task?
Despite enduring a task that clearly sucked, we didn’t grumble too much. We toughed our way through it and went home completely beat. I didn’t even want to lift my arms when I got home this evening. I weighed in at 169 pounds.
posted by fuqstik @ 6:18 PM
1 Comments:
At 5:07 PM,
Anonymous said…
I'm digging a 14 foot by ten foot greenhouse foundation in Ulster County, NY, and I found your page by googling "digging a trench by hand."
The soil here is much like the soil you describe in your entry, and utterly unlike the black gold of the Midwest. I break it into little bits using a maddock and then rake it into a snow shovel with a hoe.
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