Weekend Work
This past weekend (more Saturday) found me in Colorado at my parent's property putting in a fence on the south end. I am told there is a story there. Different people have different accounts of how things happened. I know that a fence was there. Dad replaced the old with a new. The neighbor tore out the new fence in some notion of open range ideals. There was a lawsuit. The fence was to be replaced. I am going to be honest, after 5 years of having an electric wire strung and nothing more, the fence is probably a good thing. So i spent the last day of May working on just that, a new fence.
The story doesn't begin there. It begins a week and half before then. I was tending my nieces so that my brother and sister-in-law could go out and celebrate their anniversary. To me it was no big deal, something nice to do for them. When they had gotten home, Jared asked me what I was doing at the end of the month, particularly this last weekend. I told him, like always, it was a whatever moment, and nothing was planned. He informed me that my sister Becca who had been out visiting from Mississippi all month was organizing an effort to put in the south fence for my father as a father's day gift. He told me he would just pick me up and so it was planned for me to work on a fence.
The important factors here was that Becca was attempting to get as many people to help to make the work go easier. It didn't quite work out that way.
After leaving Provo after 8:30 Friday night and getting to the parental property about 2:30, Jared and I crashed in one of the trailers and then in the morning I persisted and slept in. When I finally arose, I was told I was welding the "H" or technically it was an "A" frame for the fence line as well as capping 3 additional poles to be installed in the fence. Well let me express my love of drill stem pipe. It is cheap and given the right equipment welds nicely. Given my father's 30 year old welding box (an arc welder that should at least be looked at by a professional), I had some difficulty welding. I also choose to work at a different location than my father thought I would work at. It had to do with cars and stuff in the way.
In welding and cutting with another tool that my father has had for decades, I spent a lot of the time making sure I minimized the number of fires on the ground around me. It was fun. I got the first support into place and then not being sure of where the second and by extension what made it an "A" frame was to go, I decided I would walk to where the fence was being put in and ask my father. My brother in law Keith had to go return his rental car and so I relieved him on the fence. It was probably a mistake. That was around 11 or so. I had been up for a couple of hours and now I was driving t-stakes in the ground and wiring up the barb wire to them. Jared and I pounded away at this. At one point I had to jackhammer some rock for the t-stake to be driven into the ground other wise it was not bad.
After getting down to the bottom of the ravine and dad cutting what he thought would be adequate amount of barb wire to finish the run to where the frame i was building would go. Jared began running the next run of barbwire up the ravine. I was positioned up the run near a tree to help it get by the tree. We ran the wire all the way to the top, and then called it for lunch. It was about 12:30 or so.
Upon arriving at the barn, and thinking lunch would be done, we found out that it wasn't quite done. John and his wife were there visiting with Keith. I had been at some point under the impression that you know people were coming down to work and not visit. I was wrong and may or may not be bitter about the socializing. I having much to weld still, went over to work on the welding instead of socializing. [I was in CO to work.] At some point I was called over for lunch. It wasn't like the food was really done being made, but I went anyway. After grabbing a sandwich and some veggies as snacks, I went back to work. It might have been rude, again I was under an impression that we were trying to get something done.
As I welded people socialized and didn't head to the fence to continue work. Dad had gone to move water lines, and Jared went to take a nap. Jared had been giving me crap about sleeping in and so it was funny he took a nap. I got done welding around 4 and with Dad's help loaded the frame and posts on the back of a truck to be taken to the fence line and then everyone stopped their socializing and got ready to work.
Keith and I were tasked with placing the frame into position and then digging the holes for it to go into. It was a process, in which I broke the post hole digger's handle, and then had to go get tools. Dad and Becca had begun working on string up the second run of barb wire which was run up before lunch and Keith helped them as I had walked back to the barn for a tool and then stopped to get a tool out of the truck on the way to the bottom of the ravine.
As I cut a foot or so off the legs of the frame, Jared decided to build himself a stone bridge so that he wouldn't get his feet wet when crossing the small stream that ran the bottom of the ravine. I need to note that the bridge itself started simple, more stepping stones and then transformed into a 'bridge' as Jared added more and more rocks.
In all of it we ended up with dad taking up the third run of barb wire and everyone helping get it to the top. As Dad, Becca and Keith started to string it up, Jared and I started to clean up the old electric line. This meant pulling stakes and winding up wire. Everything was taken to the bottom of the ravine. The usable t-stakes, I had started moving to the other side of the ravine and up the slope into places about where they would go.
The day ended with the 3rd line on the posts and the 4th run being pulled up the hill. Afterwards we called it quits, which meant tools and other items were take up the ravine to the truck and driven back to the barn. Jared pulled out his FAL to shoot and I took out my recently purchased 22 to shoot.
We ended up eating that night at Lotsa Pasta/Thatsa Pizza. Normally I would have order several calzones to bring back with me, but hadn't thought that far in advance. So I had ordered Fettuccine Alfredo with Steak so Jared could take a picture of it and send it too Jordan [Jordan's response was simply "That hurts"]. I started eating and might have gotten a third of it eaten and then I was done. I was simply drained from all the work and labor of the day. So Jared finished it off as he waited for the calzone he ordered to arrive.
Needless to say, I slept well that night. Sunday we got up and mulled around until about 10 at which point Jared and I loaded into his car and began a long drive north, which only got worse when we found ourselves stuck behind a semi hauling a huge section of pipe doing 40 mph in a 65mph zone. In commenting as I have noted a couple of times to myself, the section of US191 from I70 to Monticello, UT seems to have more passing lanes for the southbound traffic than there is for the northbound traffic.
~u