Several weeks ago, some neighbours of ours up the road had a bolder roll down the mountain and land smack in the middle of their driveway. Looking up at the mountain is rather disconcerting, because you can see all these other boulders there just hanging in limbo, waiting to fall. And if you look down the bank from their driveway, there are several other much older boulders just sitting there. Almost like an ominous guarantee that it is going to happen again. Luckily for our neighbours, their driveway is absurdly long like ours, and so this boulder was no where near their house. Just really very inconveniently placed. The funny thing about it was the boulder rolled and then bounced over their fence and landed perfectly center in the road. It would almost have seemed courteous of the boulder not to take out the fence if they hadn't had to then take down their fence themselves in order to drive around the boulder....
So what to do about this boulder predicament? Blow It Up! Obviously....
This is how I like to imagine the men's conversation went:
"No it's too big. I don't think my tractor could move it. I don't want to risk it. Should probably, yeah definitely, blow it up. That's the safest option...."
"Yeah"
"Yeah"
"Better safe then sorry. Good call Dusty" (No joke, his name was Dusty)
We got a call on Sunday from the neighbours saying that their neighbours just happened to have some (perfectly legal!!) explosives lying around, and would we like to come see the thing blow up? Heck yeah, we do! Great! Can you be here in an hour? Uh.... right.
Loading up the kids on a moments notice is a whole other story in itself. I don't think our kids do well with sudden changes of plans. But that's not really the focus of this story.
We manage to get there in time, and they are only just starting to drill the holes in this thing necessary to stuff the explosives in. So we had some time to hang out.
As we are hanging out, waiting for the excitement to start, more and more people begin to show up. It's shaping up to be a full on party! I bet all in total there was around 30 people, kids included. I'm pretty sure it was the whole neighbourhood. A neighbourhood boulder blow up party! That's how redneck my life is now...
The kids basically just ran around screaming, or climbing trees or snowbanks for hours.
Oh one more fun, little tidbit! The explosive was basically just powder stuffed into a bag, stuffed into a whole in a rock. So how does one ignite a bag of powder explosive? Shoot at it! Duh.
That tractor that I imagine wasn't tough enough to push the boulder made a really great arm rest for our firing squad. I don't know if it was the rifles themselves, or the close proximity to the mountain, but it was really really loud! Also, scary, considering the boulders teetering in uncomfortably close proximity to us...
The problem with shooting at a small bag of explosive that is stuffed in a hole from 75 feet, is that the whole bag didn't go off at once. They kind of only chipped away at it and made small little explosions, hardly worth mentioning. By the end, there was just a tiny bit left and with each shot they took it would just fall out of the hole, and they'd have to go back, replace it, and fire again.
Inspecting the damage and replacing the bag, again.
I included the dog for proportions....
After all was said and done, all they managed to do was create a slightly bigger hole in the side of the boulder. It was very, very anticlimactic. In the end, they rigged up a cable and pulley system using one of the other boulders down the hill as an anchor, and just moved the rock to the side of the road. Like I said, anticlimactic.
After all the excitement died down, we all gathered at the neighbours house for a sort of potluck lunch! I'm not even kidding, there was even food at our neighbourhood boulder blow up party! I love the kind of things that bring people together in my new community.
It was such a lovely gathering too. Lots of old cowboys, ranchers, and their wives. People of all different ages. I am pretty sure I was the youngest adult though.... And kids everywhere! Which was great.
It just blows me away (pun fully intended!) the kind of community I moved into. I love it. Boulder blow up parties, tail gate trick or treating, branding parties. So positively redneck!
Things I have learned since moving to the ranch:
15) Hank, Dusty, and Buck are real cowboy names. It's not just in books!
16) Camouflage is perfectly acceptable attire no matter the occasion.
17) If there is an excuse to blow something up, you know the whole community will be there to participate!
As I was reading, I was hoping that you would post a video of blowing a boulder up. Then I kept reading and was disappointed the mission was a failure and there was no video (probably the same disappointment you had).
ReplyDeleteHaha yeah about the same. I did take several videos, but nothing happened.... Plus they were kind of shakey because I kept jumping whenever the guns went off!
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