The Dump

Some of you loyal readers will recognize today's story as a continuation of my previous sinkhole escapades, and you wouldn't be too far afield. However, today's journey felt a little like a walk on the moon compared to the familiar confines of my own backyard, sinkhole notwithstanding.

My yard, as you may recall, has been besieged by the expansion of recent emergency projects (sinkhole) into "hey-also" projects, to include a partial excavation of my side yard and a portion of the backyard behind the garage. The need for these additional projects came about, in part, from my and my husband's own over enthusiasm, as well as a lack of awareness of the fleeting nature of Time ("Hey, it's winter already!").  In sum, last year we politely declined the ever-so-reasonable offers from our previous contractors to kindly remove debris left over from their own work, mistakenly confident we could manage, DIY-style, and thus "save money." Oh, to be able to rewind the clock!

So, after our sinkhole was filled in, we had the Guy in the Big Yellow Backhoe scrape a little dirt from here, and some wood chippings from there, and push them around our yard a bit, you know, to even things out. The rest, we said, we could do ourselves.  This is what it looked liked when the GBYB left our yard:

Have I mentioned there were two 60-foot cottonwood trees chopped out of that side yard? Yep, those are residual 6" diameter "roots" wrapping around the base of my garage.

As you can imagine, digging that area out was (and I don't say this lightly) a motherfucker. Implements of destruction included shovels, rakes, hoes, a 3-foot crowbar (shout-out to our kitchen remodel crew for accidentally leaving that in our crawlspace!), and a lopper (affectionately named, of course, Cyndi).

I may have also neglected to mention that this has been a record-setting summer in Anchorage for both heat and sun. And while 75-80 degrees with low humidity sounds perfect to most people, summer-wise, it's less than ideal for us Alaskans who are used to summers of 60 degrees and cloudy with cold breezes blowing around. Throw in some dive-bombing killer mosquitoes and you've got the general idea.

I'll leave out the interim steps involving buying the wrong size trailer hitch for my husband's truck, the hilarity of our local U-Haul office, and the requisite marital bickering this sort of situation is ideal for cultivating, and just skip to the part where my husband and I (mostly I, as even he would admit) busted up the yard and pushed wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of dirt, rocks and roots into a U-Haul trailer. This, as an example, was one day's husband-free labor:

Yep, I'm badass. Tiny But Fierce.

My husband's truck has a load-weight of 3500 pounds, so we tried to estimate exactly how much dirt and rocks and roots we were loading into said trailer. I estimated the wheelbarrow loads to weigh about a hundred pounds each; my husband thought fifty. I thought he was nuts, but didn't actually know so we split the difference at 75. How many loads? I'd already done at least a dozen from the backyard before we even started the side yard. Maybe another six or so after that? We should stop loading. So we did.

I had a coupon for a free dump load courtesy of our local gas utility, probably for paying them over $1000 a year to heat our house. In any case, we pulled up to the weigh station, and the woman thought we maybe had more than was allotted by the coupon; she didn't specify whether she meant weight (1000 pounds) or dimensions (8ft x 5.5ft x 3ft). We'd have to pay cash. No problem. We weighed in at 8800 pounds (sounds heavy, doesn't it?).

As it turns out, living in Anchorage these fifteen years, I've never been to the dump. Well, not to THIS dump. The "dump" I'd been to is a relatively tidy little parking lot where you back your truck up to a big covered cement room where guys drive around in encaged plows pushing piles of our civilization's refuse around the cement floor. It's kinda fun -- while simultaneously tidying up your home, you can break glass on the floor, or try to hit the guys in the plows (accidentally, of course).

As it turns out, compared to the Anchorage Regional Landfill, the dump I'd previously visited is fucking Disneyland. The REAL dump is a huge vapid wasteland of dune after dune of humans' discarded goods. I've never been to Calcutta, but it was the first thought that popped into my head.

And, the smell. I thanked my husband for not having chosen a hotter day for this particular task (it was a blissfully cool 65 degrees and overcast this morning). I can only imagine and prefer not to, what it must smell like on a hot sunny day. So I won't, though I did wonder aloud if the workers just got used to the smell, and if any of them were married. 

I was immediately sickened, not so much by the smell but by the same idea I have every time I walk past rack after rack of clothing or shelves full of goods at WalMart, JC Penney's, or even Nordstrom's: 

What do we need with all this STUFF?!? What ultimately happens to it when it gets "old"? I could feel the weight of excess crushing me with guilt: of being American; of being relatively wealthy, especially compared to the world's population; of not trying harder to not generate waste. This thing that I never have had to look at, this wasteland of detritus, staring me in the face. It sickened me. It did.

Fortunately, my inner pop-culture goddess was also in the mix, and she reminded me this area looked like something straight out of Mad Max's post-apocalyptic landscape. I half-expected to see these guys pull up and say Hi:

[Reality Check: Mad Max came out in 1979, The Road Warrior in 1981. It sadly occurs to me some of my readers may be too young to have ever seen these movies (you can skip the Tina Turner one -- Auntie Entity, indeed). Let it be known, The Road Warrior is mandatory viewing for cinephiles; remember, this was before any of us knew what an anti-semitic nut job Mel Gibson was, so please be gentle in your judgment of us.]

My husband, overall less philosophical, was less burdened. In fact, he was borderline rapturous. I quickly discerned the source:

I confess, even I wanted a turn at the wheel of that bad boy! Truthfully, I was most impressed with the Art Nouveau beauty and geometry of the plow-face and kept wondering how, engineering-wise, that was the BEST design for its purpose. Meanwhile, I could hear my husband making little "Vroom-vroom" noises under his breath. It was cute.

So here was our load, left to unburden:

Suffice it to say, it took longer than I expected. Yet another hour of backbreading dusty, hot, stinky work with hand tools.

But finish we did, and so we bid a fond farewell to the dump, but not before seeing way too many of these lying around:

(Drink tap water, people. We're killing the planet.)

We pulled up to the weigh station & check -out window. It was $74.24. My husband asked how much weight we'd had: 2560 pounds. 

Two thousand, five hundred, sixty pounds.

One point two-eight tons of dirt, rocks, roots.

That we moved TWICE: once into the trailer, then out of the trailer into the dump.

And also, boy did we exceed the weight limit on my husband's trailer!

But all's well that ends well, and now our side yard looks like this:

and back of the garage like this:

So I guess it was worth it.  I mean, in my mind it justified tonight's dinner:

But I think the Landfill should be mandatory field trip for kids, at some point when they're old enough to "get it." (Who am I kidding? I know plenty of adults who still don't "get it.") It certainly has stuck with me and, I hope, will continue to influence at least some of my lifestyle choices.

In any case, I am officially done with the Backyard Project. If a meteor drops on my yard tomorrow morning, I'm just gonna walk right past it on my way towards my morning swim at the YMCA. Maybe put up a "For Sale: Cheap" sign.

The Hydra -- aka, The Sinkhole Saga, Final Chapter

Forgive me, dear readers, for lapsing from our usual Monday Sinkhole update. This week, I've been gearing myself up for today: the final day of the Sinkhole Saga.

Yes, after much discussion over the pros and cons of sinkhole repair techniques, and how the estimates given to us could vary so widely (from $1000 to $7000) for something so simple (?) as making a hole bigger then smaller, we elected to go for the cheap guy. I confess, I did call him up and ask him why he was so much cheaper than the other guys (I didn't discuss specific dollar figures); he responded much as I do when confronted by that very question on my own job, "Ummm, I dunno," then put forth some theories about operation costs and low overhead, blah, blah, blah. I finally realized there was no logical way for me to make a decision amongst them, so I went with "cheap." I'll spare you the suspense and tell you up front he did a fine job, at least as far as we can tell at this point in time.

I did start to worry a bit when the clock struck noon and he still hadn't shown up yet. There had, admittedly, been a bit of foreshadowing the week before when I asked the guy when they might start on the job and he replied, "Oh, you know, first thing in the morning. Well, maybe we'll do some things first, then start around 11 or noon."

It should be stated for clarity's sake that I am a Morning Person.

I put that in capital letters because if you aren't a Morning Person, you don't really ever truly understand how "11am" is as far away from "first thing in the morning" as the sun is from Pluto (or whatever the last current planet in our solar system is... I can never keep track). First thing in the morning is, mmmm, about 6am. It might even be 5am. But 7am is pushing it. And after 8am, well, forget it -- the day's half-wasted.

So. It's noon. I've already taken the dogs for a run, so they are less belligerent about the afternoon's House Arrest. And I went to the bank. And I went to Costco. And then I rushed home. To sit in my living room. Until about 1pm. -- Nothing "morning" about 1pm!

Nevertheless, the guy impressively drives up with a big dump truck attached to a flat-bed trailer, on which is sitting some kind of construction machine. It's yellow and it has a shovel thing in the back and a bucket thing in the front. When I worked at a wildlife park some years ago, we used a similar bucket thing to bring the neighbor's dead cow over for our wolves to eat. Boy, when they bit into that belly, the gas about knocked us all out!

But I digress. It was yellow (the machine, not the cow -- although...). So far, so good. My husband goes out and talks to the guy about the sinkhole (this is the owner's son, so he hasn't seen it yet). As you can see, it was a very manly chat:

My husband then came in the house and said the guy was gonna park his machine (I think it's called a backhoe, but don't hold me to that), and go have some lunch. I'm not kidding. The guys been on the job for 10 minutes, and he needs a break.

So, OK, I mean, everybody's gotta eat, and I haven't walked a mile in his moccasins, so let's cut the guy some slack. Now, keep in mind, one of the other guys who put in a bid on our project said it would take about six hours. -- Did I mention I'm a morning person? By 7pm, the day is over. Like, OVER over. Shower, dinner, TV, ... bed. At the very least, there should not still be active project-doing occurring after 6pm!

Fortunately, we thought this was a great photo-op, since the guy had left his backhoe unattended. It practically screamed, "Play with me!":

 There were even a few cheesecakes pix, but you have to pay extra to see those. Let's just say they didn't look as good as this:

nor as bad as this:

(C'mon, is that sexy to someone? 

Anyone?)

But, really now, after about 15 minutes, we're bored. How Kate Moss makes a career out this sort of thing is beyond me.

Still no guy. So we wait. And wait. And I start wondering if this is how this guy eats lunch:

I mean, that's a long way to climb up! And then back down, and drive back to our house -- OK, I can see it.

More waiting. And then I think, well, I know how I feel after lunch, so maybe he looks like this right now:

As I'm waiting, and watching out the living room window, I have time to contemplate random things like, "What makes this window corner so deadly, and is the live mosquito that's still flying around bothered by all the dead bodies of his buddies?"

My husband takes this opportunity to remind me that I expect too much of people. And also that we are paying them by the job, not by the hour. Good point. Finally, I hear his truck:

To his credit, the guy got right to work, and within about an hour, the deed was (mostly) done. I watched from the relative safety of my garage roof as he caved in the heretofore septic chamber (aka, Chamber of Doom, or Chad's Septic Cellar). Occasionally the backhoe made alarming screeching sounds as it wrenched at telephone pole-sized timbers, only to punch them back down into the earth and churn the dirt and rocks around to fill it up.

You can even see a little piece of septic pipe on the near edge of the hole. Yuck.

Eventually, it was about half-full (cuz I'm that kinda gal!):

so he went out to his dump truck and hauled in a bunch of fill dirt. (Boring, I know. I also expected more drama. Turns out construction work is pretty tedious. Who knew?)

Chad tried to help by washing the dirt around to help it settle into corners and crevices and such (This portion of today's program is for you DIY Sinkhole-Repairmen at home!).

Still, however, we needed more fill. Fortunately, my husband had other creative ideas about how to take advantage of a backhoe in our very own backyard by digging out the previous fill dirt which had been packed down behind and beside our garage after our kitchen remodel (four years ago), and cottonwood tree demolition and removal (last year). Ladies, the moral of this story is: If the construction company offers to remove the dirt pile and/or stump shreddings for a nominal fee but your husband offers to do it instead, to save money, you should run (not walk) to the ATM and have the debris hauled away as soon as possible, because left to the workings of Time, it will settle in, pack down, and become yet another fun future Project!

In any case, there are now these two other projects, which got lumped in with the sinkhole because of the backhoe. (Did I mention we also had to move our greenhouse and dismantle the chain link fence to get the backhoe back there? Yeah, we don't exactly have "acreage" at our humble little abode.) Those spaces now look like this:

& this:

Fortunately, the sinkhole looks (beautifully) like this:

(Oh, ignore the pile of tree roots that we had to chop out as we went along. That's what Advil is for!)

So whereas I started the day expecting:

while I luxuriously paid someone to do my hard labor, instead I got:

 

And for the record, THIS guy was nowhere to be seen:

Slacker.

So that all brings us around to the title of today's blog, "The Hydra." If you recall your grade-school mythology, as our poor beleaguered Jason and his beloved Argonauts fought the seven-headed Hydra, his curse was that cutting off one of the Hydra's head only caused two more to grow in its place.

And so it is with my beloved Sinkhole. I have lopped off its head in the course of one short afternoon (Six hours? The guy was done in three!), only to create the new projects of: 

• Reseeding the lawn
• Digging out the part of the side-yard the backhoe couldn't reach
• Building a woodshed in the (now flat) side-yard
• Restacking the firewood
• Re-placing the greenhouse
• Replacing the chain link fence and gate

And all these things have to be done without letting three innovative and easily bored pooches escape out the meager temporary fencing currently in place.

So I bid you all a fond farewell, at least for this saga. Thanks for reading along, & may all your backyards remain Sinkhole-Free!

The Sinkhole Saga Continues

Four weeks ago, my dog broke her toe, running through the woods.

She was utterly uncooperative about wearing the splint, and I was reprehensibly irresponsible about limiting her activity. So, just about the time we would now be thinking maybe we could take the splint off, she's running around the yard, occasionally re-injuring it and hopping around on three legs. (Lest you think me completely inhumane, I've been assured by at least three different veterinarians that it will heal, splintless.)

I could only wish my sinkhole, which occurred the very next day after the fracture, had as much potential for self-healing.

Not long after my last post, my husband & I decided we should really take matters into our own hands and find out just how much trouble we were dealing with. We'd already excavated the rim of the sinkhole, so at least the sides were unlikely to cave in on us. Still, we poked at the bottom with a stick, safely, from the sinkhole's rim, so we could now see the Gateway to Hell a little more clearly:

To help orient you, the above photo was taken looking straight down at the deepest part of the hole. Here, let my genius dog, Loki, help point it out to you (note the climbing rope in the lower left corner, ominously foreshadowing things to come):

So, what we're looking at, in the upper photo, is a line of 3 (or more!...??...!!!) railroad tie-sized beams, the middle of which has collapsed downward, allowing the soil to rush in, thereby spontaneously self-excavating my backyard one sunny summer afternoon, lo, not so very long ago.

OK, well, that seems easy enough (if a little on the chain-gang, back-breaking end of the spectrum) to rectify. But oughtn't we try to find out how big that hole actually is under there? Since the specialists (insurance company, engineers) left it up to us to manage this project on our own. Our main goals were, in the following order: a) not die; b) keep all our limbs intact and attached to our bodies; and c) try to find out what's down there.  This is what we ended up with, technique-wise:

So, the climbing rope (blue) is kind of obvious. It's attached to a climbing harness (have I mentioned I've climbed maybe twice in my life, both times in an air-conditioned gym?), which is in turn attached to a carabiner on our shed, then to my husband. The mini-backpack I'm wearing was some ill-founded idea on my part that my husband should have something to grab onto on my front end to pull me out if it came to that. How I ever thought a 1-inch plastic buckle from REI was going to save my life, I'm not sure. But knowing REI's generous return policy, in the unlikely event of my demise, at least he could return it and get a nice hiking pole out the deal, I guess.

As it turns out, I was way too wimpy to even put my head and shoulders down far enough to learn anything valuable. I kept thinking of the beams collapsing and trapping my arm (or head), and though I guess I probably COULD chew through my arm to free myself (as did a character in a recent Carl Hiassen novel I've been reading), I'd rather not. Leave all that "127 Hours" stuff to the real climbers, and James Franco.

So my husband & I switched places, and he went in the hole. He is taller than I, and far more intrepid, especially after I'd already jumped around on the beams for about twenty minutes without falling in. The photo is blurry because I'm a crap photographer, especially when I'm simultaneously belaying my husband in an effort to prevent his being buried alive:

His arms were long enough (and heart stout enough) that he was able to stick a camera down through the hole and take some photographs. This is what we saw:

It turns out there's been a whole fucking CHAMBER under our backyard the entire time we've lived here! And although we quickly ascertained it was simply an old septic crib that had never been properly filled in, these were the images that went through my head:

I mean, there's even a pipe high on the wall to prevent suffocation of the captives!

My husband says I'm morbid. These are the thoughts that went through his head:

We're still discussing that last one. Providing a wine cellar is not ultimately elected, however, the next task, obviously, is to fill in the hole. And no matter how many ways I've spun it, I can not figure out a way to make gravel go sideways far enough to fill up an eight-foot wide chamber. Strangely enough, once we knew what we were dealing with, we ultimately found professionals who would help us (for a fee, of course). It turns out Life is a little like a Google search; you have to key in the proper key words to find what you're seeking. The proper search term in this case is "excavation."

As of this writing, we have three different bids from three different excavation contractors, ranging from about-reasonable, to less-reasonable, to there-goes-my-Vespa-idea.  And, unlike Goldilocks,

my choice isn't so straightforward as preferred temperature. I mean, what's the difference between a repair for $1000, and a repair for $7000? Does the high-dollar repair come with a Bulgari watch? Is the low-dollar guy gonna show up lookin' like this guy?

I have some experience, after all, with the consequences of cutting corners. It rarely ends well. For instance, just a couple bucks for another yard of fabric could've made the whole difference for this lovely bride:

On the other hand, how different can it be to dig a hole, break up a bunch of timbers, and fill it back in? If I had a backhoe of my own, I might even try it myself. Of course, I've also had some experience with the consequences of DIY, as well:

So that is where we leave you today, dear readers: in a quandary. Do you truly get what you pay for? Or is a hole just a hole just a hole?

Stay tuned for (hopefully soon) the final chapters of our saga!