The Humanity!

Folks may be wondering why it's been so long since we reported back.  The reason: clay.  The hardest clay known to humankind can be found about 3 feet below the surface of Whittier.  It's basically rock, and we picked and shoveled and picked and shoveled until we had a trench.  Then the engineer came and said, like a cheap porn star, "deeper!"  So we picked and shoveled more.  The last 3 or 4 yards of "dirt" (as in rock) we removed were by far as time consuming as the first 40, and it was done pretty much by hand.  Yes, we had a trencher, but even it was just gave us a basic 3" wide trench to work with.  That means we dug the other 21" out by hand.

(We're partially way through the work in the picture.)

We could not have done it without friends.  Thanks Seamus, Leslie, Jeff and James.



Pictures will be up soon.