This weekend was an exciting weekend. As many of you know, Crystal and I are in the process of building our first house. To say the least, it is a fun and exciting time even though it can be a pretty daunting and scary process. Of course, there is nothing like going monstrously into debt to make you realize just how small you actually are, lol. Anyway, one of our biggest projects that we are taking on is the clearing of all the wood and underbrush that had to be removed in order to make room for our house. Given that our property is heavily wooded, this is going to be a huge process that will, most likely, take me months and months to complete fully. For example, here is a bit of a before and after shot of the land.
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Saturday, we began our big project, having the assistance of Drew and Dylan to start clearing the land. Going into the project, I have to admit that I was pretty stoked. After all, this included some of my favorite things: chainsaws; crawling across the mountainside in my 4wd truck; and moving HUGE objects w/ manpower, truck power, straps, pulleys, levers, etc. It was going to be GREAT! After all, nothing could go wrong, right? ... right?
Needless to say, Murphy had quite a bit to say concerning my initial impressions. Even though we were 100% prepared to get started working, it seemed as if everything had to go wrong at least once before we finally got down to business. Considering what we had to do, we pretty much only had 2 main points of failure
The Chainsaw
So, Hollywood tells us that the Chainsaw is one of the most important items you could possibly have in order to survive a horror movie or a zombie apocalypse. Don't believe me? Check here . Anyway, the facts that Hollywood does not tell us is that chainsaws break... a lot... consistently a lot... stay broken longer than running, a lot, consistently... etc. As we were working, I ended up stopping about every 15 mins in order to fix the chainsaw. One of the biggest problems w/ working w/ a chainsaw, is that trees are usually under some kind of tension when you cut them, even if they are on the ground. Due to this, as you cut through the tree, you experience some from of kick-back. Basically put, kick-back is the release of any kind of tension between two parts of trees that were under pressure. When this occurs, you can, at the very least, have your chainsaw stuck in between two parts of trees or, at the very worse, be missing a few teeth when a 500+ lb tree trunk comes whizzing toward your face. On top of this, I ended up dealing w/ all kinds of hardware issues as my chain kept coming off, the throttle would stick wide open, and the chainsaw would decide that it "had enough" and would pout for about 20 mins at a time.
All in all, I regret having bought a non-commercial grade chainsaw and, having already exchanged the chainsaw once on Saturday, I plan to take the current one back in order to get something a little more hardy. /sigh
The Truck
I love my Dodge. If you have not heard me say that, this means that you have probably not have ridden w/ in my truck before. It is an awesome piece of machinery that has yet to give me any form of trouble. It runs perfectly, starting w/o me having to crank at all, and is equipped to handle just about any situation. In case I am not making my point clear here... I LOVE my Dodge. Anyway, they have been doing grading work on my land for the last couple of days and we saw a pretty good rain the night before, so I was a little concerned in taking my truck through the "work zone." Since my driveway is a very steep incline, I was pretty certain that I would end up mired up in the fresh mud. The last thing I needed was a stuck vehicle.
As we were working, it became increasingly clear that we needed to have the truck w/ us in the work zone. Considering that some of the tree cuts were so heavy that 2 people could not lift a 3 foot span, I decided to bring my truck down. Popping it in 4wd, I gritted my teeth and eased down into the property. To my complete surprise, my truck did not even slip a wheel. When I got to the base of the hill, I decided to tempt fate and try to climb up it... in reverse, lol. Once again, I was pleasantly surprised as my truck easily traversed the hill. At this point, I threw caution to the wind and ended up climbing all over the work zone, going up steep inclines, driving sideways on 45 degree hillsides, and pulling huge loads of tree pieces all over the place. (Did I mention that I love my truck? Bwa ha ha!) I was able to go all over this freshly turned wet dirt (mud) and did not have a single piece of trouble.
After clearing a truck load of trees, we decided to go to the "untouched" side of the land in order to deposit them (this is the future site of the paint-ball course in which I plan to use this logs as the basis for our barriers). Anyway, you can imagine my surprise when my truck got stuck as I was trying to pull across this nicely flat and innocent stretch of land. Maybe it was the fact that this land was in the bottom of the ravine, maybe it was the fact that I had TONS of lbs in wood in the back of the truck, or maybe it was the combination of both, but my truck quickly sank into mud on the left side. In fact, it sank so deep, that I could only see the tops of my tires.
After trying to pull myself out, I realized that I was going to need help. First off, I had Dylan and Drew push, jump, prod, and poke to see if they could give me any kind of extra traction. The result was them getting completely soaked and me, albeit in higher spirits after laughing at them, stuck in a truck.
Our second attempt was to try to pull my truck out with the assistance of Crystal's Liberty. So we bought some nylon straps from the local store, and called her in to see if she could give me enough pull to get my truck out. After about 3 attempts, we realized that the Liberty would not get enough traction to offer any kind of pull to get my truck unstuck. (Note the nylon connecting the two images)
Finally, I went up to speak w/ one of our contractors to see if he could pull my truck out w/ his Caterpillar. Being the nice guy that he is, the operator moved his machine across the property (having to knock over a few small trees in the process, /sigh) and lined up to pull out my truck. To my amazement, he was able to pluck my truck out of the hole without any effort at all. We simply connected the nylon straps and he picked up the entire back end of my truck out of the hole and rolled me back about 20 feet. Wow!
I am not sure if he felt a sense of pity for me or simply was wanting to help out, but, after pulling out my truck, he took about 20 mins to cut me a back driveway into my property that avoided the crazy mire that I sunk into. It was really great of him!
In conclusion...
All in all, it was a pretty productive day. Even though I went through chainsaw hell and even though my poor truck finally met its match, I have to say that I had a great blast working w/ Dylan and Drew and enjoying the simple pleasure of cutting and hauling wood. Obviously, I would not want to do it all the time, but sometimes it is nice to get outside and have a good day's work. It was simply a great day.
With that being said, if anyone is interested in messing around w/ chainsaws and cutting up wood, we are planning to take on day two of our project this next Saturday (and probably quite a few Saturdays thereafter). I would not directly ask for anyone's help w/ this, since it really is very taxing work, but I will be more than happy to cover the cost of lunch of anyone who wants to join us. If nothing else, you can suffer in good company... lol.
As a closing thought - there is Dodge tough... and that is pretty freaking tough... but its does not hold and candle to Caterpillar tough. I love my truck, but, Crystal, I think I would love a Caterpillar as well. After all, Christmas is coming... ;)
Update: If you would like to check out other pictures taken from the clearing, check here.
Update 2: My brother just posted about his recent truck-sticking experience.