The Genie is Out of the Bottle

Today we finally pulled the trigger and rented equipment to dig out the rink.  The pawnshop around the corner also has a tool rental with a variety of different digging vehicles to choose from.  I had up until yesterday wanted to rent a Bobcat so as to end up with a nice smooth bottom of the court.  When I went in to rent to Bobcat, however, the guys at the shop told me that I would have a very hard time with the Bobcat, as it is not really meant as a digging tool.  It is more of a loader.  My research had told me that a Bobcat was the best way to go, and honestly, I could think of nothing that would work better.  An excavator would be OK, but I would end up with giant piles of dirt with no real way to move them, and the bottom would be unacceptably ragged.  After much discussion and deliberation, I decided to rent a mini skid loader instead of a full size Bobcat because the full size Bobcats were way too big, and I was afraid they would tear up the lawn.  Just as I was about to rent the Mini loader, one of the employees suggested I look at the combination loader/excavator.  It happened to be the same price as the original Bobcat I had intended on renting, and had the added benefit of having both tools in one.  I filled out the paperwork and hopped on my newly-rented tractor.

It had not rained for nearly four weeks, so there was no need to check the weather for the next day.  I got home from the rental shop at about 6:30 pm and got right to work.  I would have about three hours of digging before it would be too late to be making any more noise.  I quickly found out that i needed to watch the back end of the tractor as well as the front.  As I would scrape out a hole and drove down into it to remove more from the other side, the excavator boom settled onto the ground and I was stuck.  Trying to drive out of the situation was useless, as the drive wheels just spun.  I next got out of the driver's seat and attempted to pull the tractor out of the situation with the excavator boom.  No good.  Finally, after analyzing the situation, I realized that I would have to dig the back end by hand.  Kinda defeats the whole purpose of renting a digging machine, right?  By the end of the day, I had gotten stuck at least four more times, but was getting better at extracting myself.

The next day we awoke to the first solidly overcast day for as long as I could remember.  I made some Egg McMuffins and coffee and got ready to go out and dig.  The second I got on the seat, the rain began (this is why I don't go to Vegas to gamble).  I would now be digging in the mud for the rest of the day.  Aside from getting really wet, the job went smoothly for awhile.  I was no longer getting stuck, and was making progress in the hole.  A new problem popped up - where to put all the dirt I was digging out?  I had begun putting it at the bottom of the "bobsled run" on the hill in our back yard, but that pile was getting too big, and I could no longer move it up hill, because it was turning into slippery mud.  I spent a good 2 hours constructing a "road" so I could move the dirt up to the top of the hill.  This decreased the amount of useful time I could use the machine to dig, but it was imperative to move the dirt to somewhere other than a big pile on the side of the court.  

The rental was for 24 hours or 8 meter hours.  I kept an eye on the meter as I knew that would expire first.  With three tenths left into the rental, I exited the pit and drove the tractor out front for a hose-off.  it would take exactly 3/10 on the meter to drive it back to the rental shop.  The beast was covered in mud, and it took a lot of high pressure spraying to clean the bulk of the dirt from it.  I left a nice tractor-shaped dirt pile at the bottom of the driveway.

At the end of the day, I had moved a lot of dirty, but was not overly satisfied with the progress.  The rain had caused me to lose at least two hours of useful work.  There is still a huge job to be done by hand.  Andrew has been talking about how he wants to bulk up his muscles for the next hockey season.  Looks like I got me a partner for the next phase!