Friday, July 15, 2011

Meet Bertha II

Bambi's big (and I mean BIG) sister came to visit us for the week. I'm taking this next week off to try to accomplish way more things than are possible in one week time frame (as Jenna continues to point out). First thing is finish clearing the 30ft swath for the 1500ft of power lines that will be coming any day now. I've been cutting trees left and right, much to Jenna's dismay. And Bertha here will help me remove the pesky stumps. Second thing is to clear the path for the 1800 feet of water line I plan on installing. Third task is to actually dig the 1800 feet of water line. This may require yet another monstrous piece of equipment (oh darn). So, I definitely have my work cut out for me during this next week, especially considering the 10 day forecast is a pretty consistent 104 degrees. God bless Texas weather during yet another unprecedented drought.

Anyway, back to Bertha, I had set up the weekly rental from our friends at Hertz. She was to be delivered this afternoon between 1:00 and 5:00, and I had asked for a heads up phone call so I could meet the delivery person for a quick tutorial. Well, I got the call, but the driver was idling on the driveway when he called. I was able to talk the driver (Dewayne, another one) to wait the 30 minutes it would take me to get out there. Upon arrival he gave me the, literally, 30 second overview of how to operate this $60k piece of machinery. It wasn't THAT different from Bambi...just bigger and badder! As soon as he left, I fired her up and started testing her abilities. Let's just say, it's going to be hard to go back to little 'ol Bambi. I was able to knock over 7 stumps that would have taken forever on Bambi in about 1 hour. I've already started planting the seed with Jenna that we may have to upgrade in the near future. We'll see how that pans out.

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