Hauling Dirt, Continued
2007.07.19
Today we finished clearing out by the garage. The first time Nate tried to push the wheelbarrow up a plywood ramp into the truck, it sure was hard to… man so much resistance… it’s not really that heavy…. oh. The tire is flat. Ahahaha.
Loader has the right-of-way
The place where we dumped the dirt is interesting. They mainly run a concrete recycling and gravel operation, with big dump trucks coming and going constantly. If you have dirt to dump, you go to the little shack and pay the lady $20 (cash only), and then drive down to the west end of the place, where there is a huge ridge of soil that has been dumped probably over years of operation. It must be 30 feet tall and much longer.
What makes it exciting is the guy in a mid-size Caterpillar wheeled loader. When I say mid-size, I mean about 50,000 pounds and a bucket that could fill a dump truck in one or two scoops. This guy’s prime directive is to never let that loader sit still for more than 30 seconds, and visit every corner of the lot as often as possible. He drives that thing like a madman! At the entry gate there’s a sign that says understatedly: “Loader has the right-of-way”.
The guy in the dump truck next to us yelled out his window, as his truck was tilting back and dumping, “This is the only way to do it!”
Hauling Concrete Rubble
The next task was loading up the big pile of broken concrete and hauling that off to the same place. Now this was some back-breaking work!
The poor truck was nearly crushed by the load. Every bump in the road was a leaf-spring bounce.
Next to the concrete pile was a pile of what looked like limestone blocks or something similar. After we were done unloading the truck, I went over to investigate. I picked one up and realized it was mostly styrofoam, with some kind of surface on the outside. “Hey, catch” I said to Nate as I suddenly tossed it to him, knowing he’d expect it to be heavy. Wonder what this stuff came from?
2007.07.21
Today we hauled off the pile of junk buried by the garage, along with some other stuff, to the waste transfer station.
Then I put down some landscaping fabric and we spread out the remaining pile of masons sand. After raking that out, all I need now is some moss-covered rocks and a stone buddha statue for a Zen rock garden.
Hauling Dirt