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Cranky Subterranean Operations





Sometimes life must be lived an inch at a time.  You take your turn, and inch forward.





At the side of our house there is an electrical outlet, probably put there for vaguely useful purposes, but which has served, in recent years, to power the drip irrigation controller.







As I have been building the rondavel in the expanded back yard, and as bringing electricity to it seemed useful, I decided to extend its reach to the rondavel by burying a conduit along the new back fence to the new building.  That was the easy part.  The harder part was pulling an electrical line through the conduit.

First, I hooked up a shop vac to one end of the conduit, then fed a light line with a small wad of plastic bag attached into the other end.  There!  Like magic, the atmosphere shoved the plastic bubble down the line, pulling the light line behind it!


Then I used that line to pull a parachute cord through the conduit.





The somewhat heavy electical cable--"somewhat heavy" to account for voltage dropoff--had to be dragged up the hill through the conduit:  I made a reel to facilitate feeding it into the conduit, where I could lubricate it as it protested its way past every joint and curve.






At the other end, up in the rondavel--knowing that I was not strong enough to do the job unaided-- I rigged up a small hand winch, hoping that the parachute cord would not break.  It wanted to, but it didn't.

 The plan was for Mari to crank the winch while I, and at the other end, lubricated the cable and prayed earnest prayers to the gods of silicone, underground spirits, mechanics, physics, good luck, and parachute cords, while assessing hang-ups.  I calculated it would take more than a thousand cranks of the winch to drag the line to the rondavel, an inch per crank.


We began with Mari at the winch.  Leverage makes Mari cranky, so we traded places, but finally, really reluctantly, the cable came up out of the subway into the rondavel!

Just out of curiosity, I tried to pull it a few inches farther, manually.  I could wrinkle the sheath on the cable, but I couldn't haul it farther.  No matter:  it was far enough.












Now I have to call the doctor and ask why I have not been summoned in for pre-op tests for my hip replacement.  Do they not understand that I have work to do, and miles to go before I slip?




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