Distractions can come from something as simple as a hole in the ground. Image: Kelly Sikkema http://www.flickr.com/photos/95072945@N05/10158714405/
I’m going for a run in the morning. It’s my first long run for 3 weeks. It’ll be around 16 k’s.
Both my running and chin-up challenges are off the rails. First I suffered a calf injury. That took a couple of weeks to get through. Then I got distracted by two presentations that I’d never done before. It took a lot of time to get the story line right. The investment in time was worth it but the cost of that investment was a setback in my fitness.
There’s something else that’s distracted me. That something is the bore in our front yard. About 3 weeks ago it stopped working. I turned it on one morning then, ‘pop’, a fuse blew. And it wasn’t an ordinary flick-the-RCD-back-on kind of blow. This one was ‘down to earth.’ That’s an electricians way of saying that there’s a live wire shorting to ground.
It’s dangerous.
After some digging and testing the electrician told me that the problem was where the old bore wiring joined onto the new. Find that join, they said, and you’ll find your problem.
I started digging.
I dug and I dug and I dug some more until hole the size of the Grand Canyon appeared in my front lawn. Not only was there a hole but there were also mounds of dirt and mounds of once beautiful lawn that now sat waiting until I could find the problem and fill in the hole.
Finally, I found the join. I was happy. Soon I’d have the sparkies back, they’d fix the problem, I’d fill in the hole and my lawn could start growing again.
But things don’t always go according to plan.
About 7 years ago I had the old bore decommissioned and a new bore installed. We were doing some other work on the house at the time and I had a Bobcat driver on the property. I told him I wanted to fill in the old well.
Quick to seize on an opportunity to save himself some money in tip fees he said, “No worries. We’ll just throw this rubble down the hole then fill it in with sand.”
“Won’t it subside?” I asked.
“Nah mate. I do it all the time,” he explained.
I was convinced, but was fooled too easily.
Within a month a round depression had started to take shape on the newly planted lawn. It was the shape of the old well.
“That’s ok,” I thought. “I’ll put some topdressing on it and it’ll be fine.”
It wasn’t.
A few months later the depression was back. Once again, I did the patch job but in no time the depression was back.
I had to do something.
I called the landscaper.
“Ollie, I want you to come out and lay a patch of concrete over this bore so that it stops sinking,” I demanded.
He did and the problem was fixed – until the bore stopped.
To get to the problem join I had to break through the concrete slab that Ollie had laid.
As luck would have it, Ollie wasn’t the world’s greatest concreter. Even with the tools I had available – I’m no big tool guy – I was able to smash through the concrete patch with relative ease.
But something odd happened.
As each piece broke an ever larger hole started to appear. Soon it was more than a hole – it was a cavern in the size of a bore hole and well over a metre deep.
Now, not only did I have the holes I’d dug to expose the electrical conduit, I also had a hole where the soil had subsided beneath Ollie’s concrete cap.
The Bobcat driver had turned out to tell a lie as big as the hole he’d been filling at the time.
Today, I poured 120 kilograms of concrete on top of the Bobcatter’s rubble. That’s going to act as a plug just like Ollie’s did. But the difference is that this plug is over a metre below the surface with only rubble below it.
Tomorrow I’m going to fill the hole up with good quality fill sand topped off with some nice loam that the lawn will love.
So if I’ve lost a missed a few k’s and a few chin-ups, that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it.
