An explanation.

[the-hunter.livejournal.com]

In spite of my tech posts, I am not a tech support person. I...well, I fell trees for a living, for a local Housing Authority. I got out of Tech Support for reasons of keeping my sanity.
Sometimes I wonder whether I did the right thing...

So...
11:30am.
I am on a grass area in a housing estate.
The area is taped off.
There are cones about, closing off the pathways.
There are *Tree Felling* notices on every path.
I am dressed in the requisite tree felling clothing, all bearing the brand name *Stihl*
I have in my hand a 15" Stihl chainsaw.
It is running.
It is embedded in the trunk of a very obviously dead tree.

Somebody grabs me by my shoulder...

"What do you think you are doing?!?! enquires something wearing a pirate-style bandanna, a suspiciously mobile afghan coat and a worryingly gay-porn beard/'tache combination.
The chap turns out to be A) the chairman of the local housing comittee, and B) furious that he has not been told that we are felling the tree in question.WHY, he wanted to know, are we felling it?

Now, it is *possible*, but unlikely, that in spite of the visual clues, he really did not know what I was doing. However, given that the tree was Very Obviously Dead, leaning hazardously across a childrens play area and a footpath, and shedding large branches onto the path, it would be a pretty stupid person who could not work out why it was being felled.

However, the clincher is this. There are 1,300 houses in this housing estate. all but 40ish are empty. Because everyone is being moved out. because they are bulldozing the entire estate. Including the trees. And redeveloping the area.
And yet this paragon of the community, this intellectual giant among men, this...somewhat mite-infested gay pornstar thought he had to risk his life to save the life of a dead tree. An extinct arbour. It is diseased, deceased and gone. it had shuffled off its mortal coils. It was falling apart around us as we argued!

Fuckwit.

And then...I got a phonecall requiring me to go back to the yard. We have a new piece of equipment. It is a twin tank, 1600 litre bowser system with a massively powerful built-in pressure washer, for cleaning the big communal waste bins. It has been developed to sit on a rack on rollers, and when required it can be winched on to a Transit van, and then winched off again. Today the MD of the company that designed and built the system came to have a look at it. I had to winch it on to the Transit. For the first time ever...

Nice system. Until the cable exerted a force at 90 degrees to the head of the eyebolt that was fastened to the rack system. The eybolt will take a direct tortional load of over 8 tonnes. Turns out, however, that at 90 degrees, it will take rather less. The bolt sheared. The cable, hook, pulley and eyelet followed the direct line of pull. Which, of course, was directly back to the winch. Which, of course, was where I was. So, 4 feet of 1/4" steerl cable wrapped itself at phenomenal speed round my legs, and the eyelet embedded itself an inch deep in the breezeblock wall about 14" from my head!

"It wasn't meant to do that!" said the designer.
"Eeep!", I said.

Comments

[glitteringlynx.livejournal.com]

O.O

Thank goodness you're alright!

[random-c.livejournal.com]

Much my own thought, but then, I'm getting used to this sort of thing. When he was hanging by his feet into the sofa-eating machine, after cutting himself free of the mattress which had pulled him in... he got his mobile out and filmed it working.

[sessifet25.livejournal.com]

With only the last thought in the row flashing through his head being 'Oh shit, I'm going to die.' if I recall that story correctly.

[kizayaen.livejournal.com]

...and the eyelet embedded itself an inch deep in the breezeblock wall about 14" from my head!

I'd have been awhile cleaning stains out of my trousers.

[the-hunter.livejournal.com]

I was...less than impressed. The wall was very impressed. Indeed, it had the impression of a 5/5" steel eyelet and double pull winch in it. Luckily chainsaw trousers are lined with kevlar, which is...surprisingly absorbant...

[kizayaen.livejournal.com]

In any case, my deep and sincere congratulations for emerging to tell the story.

[random-c.livejournal.com]

He has so many of these sorts of things happen to him, I'm no longer surprised. Considering that the last thing he cut himself on was a potato, I've concluded that he's destined to die in a freak bubblewrap incident, and am trying to keep all protective packaging away from him...

[dreamatdrew]

A potato?!?!?!??!?!

THAT requires explanation.....

[alicephilippa.livejournal.com]

It is a normal occurrence in the life of The Hunter.

[random-c.livejournal.com]

Broken glass in the ground, potato had grown around it. You don't normally expect potatoes to be armed.

[dreamatdrew]

Dude, cyborg tater..... thats scary...
for the past half hour I've had an image of a borg-assimilated tuber. This is NOT GOOD.

[greatblondino.livejournal.com]

Potatoes are smarter than you think!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oq66HBzCzyo

[the-hunter.livejournal.com]

Actually, in my defence, it was a sneak attack with a hidden weapon. I was peeling a potato, and the tuber had grown around a shard of glass. You just don't expect to get bottled by a Marris Piper in your own kitchen.
And IIRC the last thing I badly cut myself on was a discarded glass herb container, which cut clean through my safety bood and sliced a chunk out of my foot. Causing me to comment at the time that *Thyme is the heel grater*

[dreamatdrew]

Dammed sneaky tubers.

Meanwhile:
"thyme is the heel grater"
Oh.... that is bad..... just absolutely horrid.

[the-hunter.livejournal.com]

Thanks :)

[dreamatdrew]

See above comment to random_c

[kizayaen.livejournal.com]

Also, am I the only one who thinks it's an amazingly bad idea to grab the shoulder of a man who doesn't see you and who has a fucking CHAINSAW actively running in his hand?

[the-hunter.livejournal.com]

You think?
Last week, whilst feeding wood through our shredder (a device which is designed for, and perfectly capable of, reducing telegraph-pole sized bits of tree into chunks about 1/2 inch at the widest point) a chap grabbed my shoulder, and waving his half empty plastic bottle of White Star cider, inquired whether he could put his arm in...
He got quite cross when I dropped the cider bottle into the machine, but was mollified, and hypnotised, when the shiny blue fragments festooned, at speed, out of the ejector nozzle...

[kizayaen.livejournal.com]

I can't fathom the first inkling of sense to that request.

[the-hunter.livejournal.com]

You need to try White Star. Just once.Just a sip. No more. More is dangerous. It is...mind expanding. Indeed, I witnessed (and had to clean up after) one chap who's mind was expanded by the impact of his head on the pavement when he jumped from the top of one of our 19 storey blocks of flats, having drunk three bottles of the stuff. To this day I still clearly remember the police officer shouting *I found his eyeball! It was in the bus shelter!*

[kizayaen.livejournal.com]

And this is supposed to be an enticement to try it out? :p

[the-hunter.livejournal.com]

Well, on second thoughts maybe not. On the other hand, it does explain the question. Or at least explain why it was asked :)

[medusa-nw.livejournal.com]

I really shouldn't be laughing as hard as I am at this. :-D This entire thread totally wins. You, sir, are a legend!

I do know someone who fell in one of those woodcutters, actually. Or, I suppose, the correct term is knew...

[greatblondino.livejournal.com]

Agree, I was about to start flaming for posting off-topic but after reading properly, this thread is 100% epic win.

[the-hunter.livejournal.com]

I did worry about posting, but...it is kinda related, and it is kinda techy, and I was wearing a support when the bold sheared :)

[argonel.livejournal.com]

Sometimes you should just honor their requests. When you call 911 you tell them that you weren't able to stop them.

[the-hunter.livejournal.com]

Why call 911 (999 over here)?
had he put his arm in, the rest would have followed. Blood and bone is a good fertiliser...straight on to our flower beds as a mulch. One fewer idiots, and a prize rose garden. Win/Win situation :)

[margaretc.livejournal.com]

Heh. My spousal unit (the guy in the icon) also fells trees for a living. He regularly has stories about similar incidents (usually without the pirate costumes, but not always). Right now he's in an email war with a Town Council member who has heard from some residents who can see a specific Greenway out their windows about all of the dead trees that they can see lying about. It's not even worth going in to details, but essentially, these people were apparently OK with dead trees standing upright, but once they're down on the ground, they're unsightly. In the woods, in a park. Ex-trees! The plumage don't enter in to it!
Yeah.

[the-hunter.livejournal.com]

For every tree we leave there is a tennant who wants it felled. For every tree we fell, there is a tennant who wants it left. (Not really practicable, once the tree is down. Superglue is just not up to the job...)
Although we did once fell three trees in one of our properties, only to discover that the property had actually been sold twelve months previously...that was...awkward :)

[spooforbrains.livejournal.com]

In the news yesterday I read about some "tree surgeons" employed by a London borough council who misread their work order, rocked up at the wrong house, ignored the lack of a response at the door, broke in to the back garden of the house, and cut down the wrong tree.

The residents of the house were ... less than impressed.

[mouse-from-marz.livejournal.com]

I'd be willing to bet a lot of the techs on this community will envy that chainsaw =D

[the-hunter.livejournal.com]

One of the reasons for my getting out of tech support (back in the mid...who am I kidding, very early eighties) was that I was starting to consider the chainsaw to be a perfectly acceptable educational tool.

[alicephilippa.livejournal.com]

I was thinking that in the '90s. Which I suspect was one of the reasons the then g/f wouldn't let me have one.

[xforge.livejournal.com]

Uh.

"Hi, I'm gonna pass out nowFWOMP."

Holy moley!! Glad you're not on the front page of the local tabloid.

[kallell.livejournal.com]

so you are ok, if not wearing soiled underwear?

[the-hunter.livejournal.com]

As I mentioned earlier, the Kevlar stranded padding in the chainsaw trousers is...absorbant. Not good in a rainstorm, but surprisingly useful in such situations as mentioned above. I can't help but think, given the situation we sometimes find ourselves (watching a 100 foot fir tree falling *towards* you, for example, when the wind catches it at exactly the wrong moment) that this may actually be a design feature. Thanks, Stihl :)

[jecook]

*chuckles*

Yeah, anyone with common sense should know that interrupting a person with a chainsaw running is Not Healthy. *rolls eyes*

and wow. Glad the bolt missed you.

[jcaswell.livejournal.com]

Yikes! Hope you're being paid danger money!

[mynameisnotreal.livejournal.com]

Jeeseus! I've done heavy rigging before, and during our yearly refresher training, they always showed us the 'after' images of guys who got cut in half by snapping cables. You were damn lucky!

[the-hunter.livejournal.com]

My fondness for the Stihl trousers can not be over-stated. Proof against cable kick-back *and* super-absorbant for those *over-anxious* moments :)

[random-c.livejournal.com]

...and then you come home to deal with tech support muppetry...

[the-hunter.livejournal.com]

Nice and relaxing! *Twitch* :)