A night in the pit of despair

As only some of you are aware, my family owns a rock quarry. And what that entails is that every now and then we have to blowup a big chunk of rock with explosives.

Well, it has reached the time that we destruct a little more of our side of the mountain. Yes, it’s a mountain that we have blown off half of. It looks really cool.

We do not do this ourselves, but contract out that part of the job to guys that do it all the time. These fellows believed that they could come in the morning, get every thing ready, and blast the evening.

As it turns out, they had underestimated how much time it was going to take them and were not able to complete the job in one day. But, they could not leave all their equipment unattended so I “acquired” the job of staying the night on half of a blown up mountain, and at a time of year when the nights are cold. But it was not all for naught because I was also going to get $100 out of it.

On top of that it is also deer season, and this gave me the chance to be where the deer where when the sun came up.

So I grabbed my rifle, pistol, some leftover pizza, a cigar, my MP3player (I am too cheap to own an ipod) and a sleeping bag. I was set for the end of the world…………..or so I thought. Dhun dhun dhunnnnnnn!

I hopped in my car (a 93 Chevy Corsica) and made my way the half mile to the pit road, I then turned up the road and drove the 1/8 mile back towards my house, only I went from an altitude of 14m to 130m (according to Google earth).

I drove to within view of the “package” and did what the son of an infantry soldier should do……….. I built a fire. Yes, the comfort of the cowardly, heater of meat, the drawer of bugs. When building a fire you also have to collect wood. This I also did. When I had more that enough wood to last the night, I then realized that I had run out of things to do……….. damn, I had only been there a half hour. What am I suppose to do now?!

Answer; call one of my two sisters!

At that time both my sisters were in Pittsburgh (my younger sister visiting with my dad who was visiting my older sister).

Real quick I would like to give you some information that you should file away to use whenever reading my web log in the future. I live about an hour away from my smoking buddies, so when I smoke a cigar or my pipe (a social activity) I am by myself. And since it makes me feel lonely when I do such thing by myself, I call people. Whom do I call? The only people that I am physically able to carry on a conversation with on the phone………. my sisters.

Another interesting fact is that I had already smoked one cigar that day (around noon) so my bi-monthly call to my sisters had already been taken care of.

Needless to say, my older sister was shocked and expecting to hear that someone had passed on to the other side or some such thing. As this was not the case I informed her of the circumstances that surrounded me and the nature of my phone call as well as my location. (Just as a side note, it made me feel really smart to write that last sentence, so if you have a issue with it go ahead and tell me, but I don’t really care that much).

We then proceeded to chat about the weather and such things until motherly stuff called for her full (or as much as she could muster) attention. On that note we ended the traffic of my voice becoming digitized and traveling 2000+ miles to be turned into something intelligible by the average (or in this case below average (yes that was a shameless stab a my older sisters intelligences)) gorilla.

As this had only used up about one of the 12 hours I had to burn, I then proceeded to call my younger sister whom I had also called earlier that day, but was less surprised to hear from me due to the fact the we would call each other multiple times during the day to ask retarded questions. However, I sill told her everything I told my older sister. I then proceeded to hold almost the same conversation with the younger sister as with the older, excepting the part about motherly stuff. It was almost creepy.

After the end of the phone calls it was full dark and I was, once again, out of things to do. No problem, I then proceeded to study the roots of astronomy……………. I sat around a looked at the stars.

As I was sitting there, watching the universe move around me, I saw this light moving really fast. Then it started making this really loud thundering noise. The next thing I know there is another one and they start what appears to be a dogfight! It was at this point that I realized that what I was witnessing was two fighter jets on a training flight.

I was so excited that I called my mom to tell her about it.

Once these two pilots (or more, they may have been two seaters, all I could see was their after burners) decided that they had had enough, the inevitable happened. I got tired, the fire went out, and I got really scared that something was going to eat me. But, knowing myself fairly well (I mean, I have known the guy for 19 years) I had prepared for this eventuality……………. I climbed in the back seat of my car and locked the doors.

Jumping back in time to when I was talking to the blasting guy.

As I was working out the details of what I was suppose to do he told me that they would be back at about 6:30-7:00am. So, based on that information I decided to reopen the gate across the quarry road at 6:00am.

Jumping back forward in time to where I was in the back seat of a small car trying, unsuccessfully to sleep.

Knowing what time I was to rise, I took my cellular telephone and set three alarms, one for 6am, one for 6:10am, and finally one at 6:15am.

After sleeping first sitting up, then on my head, and them some weird combination of the two that I am not sure I will ever be able to duplicate, my 6am alarm goes off. I unzip my sleeping bag, stretch my legs up to the front seat, and wait for the feeling to return to my head and feet.

The next thing I know I am down at the house! I look at my watch. 8:30! HOW DID THIS HAPPEN. I walk out to the living room. THE BLASTER GUY IS IN THE DRIVEWAY! I have the gate keys in my pocket! WHAT THE DUCE? I DON’T WEAR A WATCH!

It was at this time that my 6:10 alarm went off.

I reached out and opened the car door I was leaning against, did this awesome back flip/roll thing out of the car, and slapped my self a few times to make sure that I was really awake this time. After establishing that I was indeed not in fairytale land any more, I decided that it was rather cold out and that it might be a good idea to put my pants on.