Yet another night in the dig

Another Thursday night, another crew of three on the road. David was starting to worry if people were tired of our digs and pulling out. I struggle with concepts like that; most of the men are quite happy do do hard dirty work, and they have to pull out if we do something entirely different, because they have other responsibilities in their lives too. Anyway. It would be just the three of us! And again, Miles might or might not appear too. I foresaw trouble; David's dig needs three people to work optimally. We might be with four. Then what? I would feel morally obliged to be in both digs and that's not possible. We'd have to see.

We first picked up the key, and some cake, from Mick. We were also introduced to his new cat. It was good he was home; when we reached the parking lot I realized I had forgot my helmet. We had to go back and borrow one from Mick! Then we tried again.

In order to be ready for our dig I picked up two metal rods on the way to the pitch down; they could function as crowbars for removing big stuff in our dig. There's a big rock in there that won't budge without persuasion!

When we got to the pitch down we heard the generator: we had a Miles! That was confirmed immediately as he'd seen/heard us coming and was at the bottom of the pitch. We discussed for a bit what to do; we decided to all go into David's dig. He needed two buckets, and one of these was in the other dig, so I went there first. I took the liberty to also quickly remove the rocks I had thrown out the previous time. Miles showed up too; I figured he should have a look for himself. He still hadn't been in! And now he chanced it. He didn't seem entirely thrilled by the state the far end was in but well, we can work on that. Time to go and help the other chaps.

They were already working hard. They had some ingenious system with a bucket in the middle of a long rope; David could pull the empty bucket towards him, fill it, and then Paul could pull it the other way and empty it. Then he could reattach it. We brought the other bucket. As the original was only detachable on one side, and ours only attachable on one, it wasn't immediately clear how the system could be adapted to two buckets. David wasn't stopping to discuss; he kept filling buckets. Our improvised first attempt was met with derision. After some shouting to and fro I figured I'd rather be in the other dig. Miles wasn't feeling like his full potential was tapped into so we skedaddled to the other dig. David might need to work on his managing skills!

On the way to our own dig we came past Paul's bag; he had the cake. We first had some of that before we set to work. I started by attacking the big rock. I managed to lay it flat but it was SO big and heavy this still wouldn't do. We had to blow it up! So we changed to drilling holes and placing charges. Some more in-the-way rocks received one. Some smaller stuff got thrown out.

By the time all was ready Miles had to leave. That left me to set the charges, that were ready wired, off. First I had to warn the others. But David was still digging; I joined in. I don't know how well things went before I came, but I thought we were on a roll with the three of us. It works a treat! Just the number of four had been a bit unfortunate. It wouldn't be before 11PM that he was willing to come out. That meant not detonating until after that. Oh well! It did work. I will see next time how it had gone.

We walked back in the moonlight. It was stunning! A night that had started a bit iffy had ended well. On Sunday we would be back!