Three-wheel wheelbarrow ride

Risk taking has always attracted me and it can be traced back to my very early years. One of my first high-stake adventure happened when I was about five years old and was playing around my parents home in the French Alps. My dad had a 3-wheel wheelbarrow, an unusual contraption that could only be found in Haute-Savoie, I guess. That unique cart, used mostly to carry manure, was parked behind the house and next to a steep slope that dropped more than 200 feet below to “La Dranse” the local torrent.

While still a tiny tot, I managed to climb into the cab and began to roll the front wheel with my two hands. Slowly, I managed to maneuver the heavy wheelbarrow so it pointed straight into the slope and before long, it barreled down like a rocket with me as its unique passenger. The first part of the slope was about 20 degrees followed by a short, flatter ledge before plunging again into a 30 degree slope that generated a high rate of speed close to actual flight.

Amazingly, I managed to hang on during the ride, hopefully enjoying the acceleration until the steep section transitioned with the much portion near the riverbed. The wheelbarrow hit the transition with great force and I flew up in the air before landing in the meadow while my ride continued and came to a stop a few yards short of the water.

I then managed to crawl half the way up the steep hill, because one of my knees was hurting badly, and was met by my 12 year old brother who after seeing both the wheelbarrow and his younger sibling missing, ran almost all the way down, picked me up and carried me back up the best he could until he was met by my panicked parents who had just figured out the situation. I had enough strength and audacity left though to tell them that if they had put that terrible wheelbarrow away, I wouldn't have been hurt. I obviously survived the ordeal to write this blog, only had a sprain knee but a lifelong appreciation for high speed and for becoming an adrenaline junkie. Even today, I still wonder why I never mentioned this remarkable performance on any of my résumés!

Recipe for xeriscape

Yesterday, I undertook to built a xeriscape pod in our garden next to our Alta swing-chair. I hope you understand what all this gibberish means. At any rate, I started the work with one half-ton of rocks, one wheelbarrow full of road-base, two wheelbarrow of dirt, five gallon of large pebbles and half a wheelbarrow of half-inch sand. I blended and worked the entire heap, took a leisurely lunch break, and let the result gently cook in the afternoon sun. By the end of the afternoon it was just right and ready to plant with native, high-desert species. Yes, in spite of the time and effort involved, the whole endeavor was almost a piece of cake!

Avant-garde wheelbarrow

A few days ago, as we were discussing wheelbarrows, I couldn’t help but think that this implement has never benefited from modern evolution. To date, it has remained like the lowly coffee-bean was before Starbucks. That prompted me to come up with a few technological enhancements that should make a state-of-the-art wheelbarrow as desirable as an i-phone and a cool stocking stuffer come this Holiday season. First and foremost, my proposed design would look cool; its body would be made of the most advanced composites, the paint job would be stunning, it would (finally!) receive a small Honda engine with electric starter along with disc-brake on the front wheel (yeah, it would be all-wheel drive!). Not only the side legs would be mounted on shock absorbers, but they would incorporate a telescopic ejector that would – on command – unload its content, thus increasing productivity and minimizing operator fatigue. And, yes, there would be a fully featured dashboard, with speedometer, i-Pod hook-up and optional GPS.
Now, where’s your order?

Our wheelbarrows

If you think the wheelbarrow was invented by the English, the French or even the Italians, you’re dead wrong! Long before they’d mass-manufacture clothing, computers, bikes, pet food and toothpaste, the Chinese had invented and produced the first wheelbarrows some 1,900 years ago. The Europeans caught up with it later, between 1170 and 1250 AD. The standard wheelbarrow is a small hand-propelled vehicle, usually with just one wheel designed to be pushed and guided by a single person using two handles to the rear. Its typical capacity is approximately 170 liters (6 cubic feet.) Since we live in America we own two wheelbarrows. One (the largest) is mine and was purchased brand new four years ago. The other (a tad smaller) is Evelyne’s and was bought used at a garage sale three years ago for $5.00. We later had to replace the wheel which cost us a whopping $25.00! Both are orange in color (so we don’t lose sight of them in the yard) and are very well maintained. We park them under our deck in the back and they are by far the most economical vehicles to operate that we have ever own. There will be more on that wonderful device in an upcoming blog, so please, stay tuned!

The end of the slides... era!

Yesterday was clean-up day and we worked inside our little garden shack reorganizing the mess I've been so good at creating over the past few years. I first sorted out a multitude of pieces of wood, trim, shelving, you name it, and then I starred at my slide collection. For those of you who only know digital photography, there was a time - not so long ago - when pictures were stored on 35 mm slides.

So until a day ago, I was still the proud owner of some two thousand such items that I had finally digitized four years ago, and discovered in the process that many of them were already badly faded or discolored. Well, when I saw them all lined-up in their original Kodak boxes that contained the once-high-tech plastic carousel, I delicately placed the whole collection inside my wheelbarrow before dumping it unceremoniously inside our large garbage can.

I can only hope that its re-incarnation under the quite virtual form of jpeg or jpg files (which by the way, stands for “Joint Photographic Experts Group”) will last at least as long as these venerable slides have since some of their oldest specimen were well into their forties! I must confess that had a tinge of nostalgia and felt a bit guilty as I watched these little guys tumble into a horrible and wide open garbage can...

Between the rocks and the hard place

Last week, I splurged on 5 tons of pebbles, ranging from 2 to 5 inches in size, as I wanted to play landscaper and fix a number of areas around my house that I felt had been poorly addressed by the pro hired to do the job two years ago.

So, last week, a big dump truck came to the house and dropped my mineral purchase next to the driveway. Since then, I've been handling rocks almost everyday.

At this point, I must have spread half of the pile around my house and my wife remains confident that we can find some good use for the entire delivery. I would agree with her assessment, but now begin to question the size of the task as it relates to my aging body.

Still I enjoy doing that job and remain confident that I will see the pile wither away. Not much thinking is required for that job, just a tiny bit of patience and some basic puzzle skills (you don't just dump the bucket and walk away, you must make sure these little pebbles dovetail nicely). Don't forget a never-ending stamina to push the wheelbarrow or carry the heavy buckets of stone.

Oh, by the way, I sleep soundly at night!

Too much mulch?

There's a huge area covered with mulch around our house. On any irregular terrain, surface is hard to measure and while I came up with something around 2,200 to 2,800 square feet, this is neither precise nor guaranteed.

That's how, based on my calculations, I just had 8 cubic yards delivered to my home. Yes, that's about 216 cubic feet and if it were spread one inch thick, it'd cover just shy of 2,600 square feet, but will it?

For the moment, I'll have to shovel into that big pile of mulch, carry it on my wheelbarrow to where it's needed, while my dear spouse will spread it as harmoniously and consistantly as she can.

Will there be enough of it? We'll see, but what's certain is that with all the hard work at hand, we won't have to go to the health club for a while!

Nine lives?

Just like cats, we all might have nine lives – or hopefully, even more! We all know that our lives are weaved with danger, fear, accident and luck (good and bad.) Navigating our existence is a matter of dodging the bullet and making it unscathed as we progress along the way. When I was 4 or 5 I made a frightful descent in a three-wheel wheelbarrow into a deep valley. I should have died, but I didn't.

Shortly thereafter, I almost drawn as I fell in a mountain creek overpowered with spring-run off and was luckily saved by a little boy that played with me that day; I even remember his name, Gerard Leserson. During my military service, car accidents were in the cards. I first had one while hitchhiking with my buddy Guibelin, in the south of France, when the 403 Peugeot we were in rolled over on the middle of busy Route Nationale 7; we all made it out okay. Another one, most spectacular, involved me and three others, inside another Peugeot – a 404 this time – that was driven by my good friend Michel Duret. The car hit a tree head-on after aquaplaning near Montpellier, also in the south of France. We were brought to the hospital and also all survived it well.

Still in France, one night, my brother almost got us into the lake of Montriond, when he hit a retaining wall at a high rate of speed; thanks heaven we stayed on the road. After that, my adult life became busy, filled with job and family responsibilities that shielded me from these elements of danger. Aside from a few close encounters while skiing and in spite of millions of miles flown the world over without a major crash, I have stayed quite safe. The last dangerous exercise I remember doing to drive up la Restonica narrow road in Corsica in 2006, and since then, I have stayed extremely secure, I don't want to spoil my remaining “lives...”