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Pastimes : Where the GIT's are going -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Alan Smithee who wrote (128936)	12/28/2006 11:05:00 PM
From: KLP	Respond to of 225578

It sure looked pretty messy to me, but worse than messy, SCARY!

To: Alan Smithee who wrote (128936)	12/29/2006 12:24:16 PM
From: SI Bob	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 225578

Typical man, playing with trucks and tractors! When I first told the long story, I mentioned that the wife of the owner of the Cat 963 (which wasn't stuck when the picture was taken, but later ended up stuck) was holding her grand-daughter, watching us try to free the machine, and her grand-daughter asked "Why is the tractor stuck?" Grandma winked at me and said "Because a man tried to do something". Those pictures were taken 3-4 weeks after I initially stuck the machine. It wasn't that bad at first. But it rained and the pool it's sitting in didn't exist when I first sank it. Actually, the hole for the pool didn't either. When I got it stuck, I started digging behind the machine to see if I could get down to solid footing and work my way toward the dam. There's solid footing under there, but it's so far down I couldn't reach it. Now that I have an excavator, I've been working on making sure there's a good channel for water to escape. I need the muck to get semi-dry so I can try to get it all removed next year. It's been accumulating for about 20 years and a lot of it washed in from the surrounding farmland, which was often used for cattle. So this should be some seriously fertile stuff eventually. Edit: Even scarier was when I finally got the machine out. It took several days with an excavator to dig out an escape route then hours of having the backhoe running at a fast idle in first gear while the excavator moved it one slow inch at a time straining against a pair of really stout chains. I had to be careful with the excavator because if it spun the tracks, it could've gotten stuck, too. Through much of the pull, the backhoe was leaned over at far less than a 45 degree angle. The only reason it stayed upright (I guess) is that it was surrounded by enough muck to hold it up. On dry ground, that angle would've surely rolled it. The angle was so steep that the right window visible in this first picture got broken off. Oh, and about a week later I stuck the excavator even worse and had to hire an excavation company to do a full day of serious digging to get it out. I think I've since learned where to go and where not to go, and am always watching the tracks very carefully to make sure they're not breaking through.