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which_chick) wrote2012-03-19 10:22 am
which_chick) wrote2012-03-19 10:22 am
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Over the weekend, I was at La's house. We went out to get wood. On 30, towards Everett, there is a we-buy-lumber place that cuts off the butt ends of timber logs and leaves them in a pile for determined souls to heft onto pickup trucks and take away to burn. Now, these are timber logs, so the butt ends are kind of large. 2' is on the small end of the diameters you're working with. They're timber logs so they're freshly cut and soaking wet (and thus extra-heavy, for the not-familiar-with-firewood folks among the lexience). Length varies but is typically between 6" and 3'. These are not small pieces of wood nor are they lightweight pieces of wood. They are free pieces of wood and they're very truck-accessable, which is important because we can't lift or carry any of them.
You don't go to get wood with just one person. You need at least two people. An axe, a maul, and some wedges don't hurt but the pieces aren't pretty and frequently won't split even in the face of really good efforts. A third person is nice if you can manage that, too. So La and Heather (not-the-cousin) and I went to go get wood. It looked smaller when we drove by at 60 mph than it did in person.
We loaded the wood onto the pickup truck. It was an effortful sort of thing, but we got it done. I can lift a hundred pounds pretty handily. Laur can lift a hundred pounds pretty handily. We could not actually lift any of the logs straight up. (Pivot, tilt, lean, slide and shift are valuable skills when working with things heavier than one can lift.) But we got them on the truck anyway with careful planning. We put a big "wheel" slice (about 1' long) on the ground in front of the tailgate. Then we flipped pieces end-over-end so that they landed sitting on the wheel slice and would thus be high enough to pivot onto the bed of the truck. When done, flip wheel slice up to half rest on tailgate, pivot onto truck bed. Voila, all logs loaded even though loaders cannot actually lift any of them.
We got back to La's house and she went inside to start lunch. Heather and I stayed outside to unload the wood (easier to unload, as it is all downhill). As we were doing that, a younger dude (twenties?) strolled up -- apparently we'd parked him in -- and we pressed him into service. He had those pretty "welcome to the gun show" arm muscles so I figured he could man up and shift some of the damn huge logs so that I would not have to do so myself, what with being tired and all.
The young man with the pretty arm muscles bent down and attempted to upend one of the logs. He strained. The log lay there like logs do. He straightened up. The log still lay there. So I was all "Move out of the way." and he hopped out of the truck and stood on the ground beside it, taking up stopper position. (There is a slight downhill from the woodpile to the chicken coop. Wood being unloaded from the truck sometimes needs to be stopped from rolling down the hill.) I upended the log (by myself) and flipped it out of the truck. It glanced off of another log and started to roll, very slowly, down the hill. The young man stared at it. By the time I was like "Get the log" it had picked up speed and was out of reach.
The young man said "Y'know, I lay fiberoptic cable. My boss wouldn't want me hurting myself trying to lift that because then I wouldn't be able to work. And there was no stopping that log once it started rolling." Uhm. Okay. You keep telling yourself that. I'll be over here with my functional strength and my grey hair, moving heavy things and mocking your pretty useless arm muscles.
You don't go to get wood with just one person. You need at least two people. An axe, a maul, and some wedges don't hurt but the pieces aren't pretty and frequently won't split even in the face of really good efforts. A third person is nice if you can manage that, too. So La and Heather (not-the-cousin) and I went to go get wood. It looked smaller when we drove by at 60 mph than it did in person.
We loaded the wood onto the pickup truck. It was an effortful sort of thing, but we got it done. I can lift a hundred pounds pretty handily. Laur can lift a hundred pounds pretty handily. We could not actually lift any of the logs straight up. (Pivot, tilt, lean, slide and shift are valuable skills when working with things heavier than one can lift.) But we got them on the truck anyway with careful planning. We put a big "wheel" slice (about 1' long) on the ground in front of the tailgate. Then we flipped pieces end-over-end so that they landed sitting on the wheel slice and would thus be high enough to pivot onto the bed of the truck. When done, flip wheel slice up to half rest on tailgate, pivot onto truck bed. Voila, all logs loaded even though loaders cannot actually lift any of them.
We got back to La's house and she went inside to start lunch. Heather and I stayed outside to unload the wood (easier to unload, as it is all downhill). As we were doing that, a younger dude (twenties?) strolled up -- apparently we'd parked him in -- and we pressed him into service. He had those pretty "welcome to the gun show" arm muscles so I figured he could man up and shift some of the damn huge logs so that I would not have to do so myself, what with being tired and all.
The young man with the pretty arm muscles bent down and attempted to upend one of the logs. He strained. The log lay there like logs do. He straightened up. The log still lay there. So I was all "Move out of the way." and he hopped out of the truck and stood on the ground beside it, taking up stopper position. (There is a slight downhill from the woodpile to the chicken coop. Wood being unloaded from the truck sometimes needs to be stopped from rolling down the hill.) I upended the log (by myself) and flipped it out of the truck. It glanced off of another log and started to roll, very slowly, down the hill. The young man stared at it. By the time I was like "Get the log" it had picked up speed and was out of reach.
The young man said "Y'know, I lay fiberoptic cable. My boss wouldn't want me hurting myself trying to lift that because then I wouldn't be able to work. And there was no stopping that log once it started rolling." Uhm. Okay. You keep telling yourself that. I'll be over here with my functional strength and my grey hair, moving heavy things and mocking your pretty useless arm muscles.
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I have found I can lift 200 lbs if I don't have to bend to do it, and only for a few seconds. Forget carrying. Regarding my herniated disc (gee, how'd I get that LOL?) I am not supposed to lift more than 15 lbs according to the doctor. That's good advice if i don't want to be popping Advil like vitamins.