Work’n In A Pine Mine, Go'n Down Down Down...

I don’t like physical labor.

I’m just not into it.

Don’t get me wrong, I do like the feeling of accomplishment one receives from taking on a large (dare I say, insurmountable) task, but honestly I’m not a fan of the work.

Me, I’m an office monkey, give me a huge project with a banana as my reward and I am dauntless (that’s a metaphorical banana).

This weekend we had to do Weed Abatement up at the cabin in Big Bear. For those of you who don’t know, weed abatement is the act of cleaning up all the pine needles and branches and crap off your property. The reason this is so important is that if there’s a fire the ground it’s self won’t erupt into a flaming carpet of doom.

Very few people realize how many pine needles are lost over the course of a year, but let me tell you, it’s pretty close to a fuck-ton. There were some areas where it was well over 4 inches thick. I swear, with the amount of shit on the ground you’d think the trees would be dead or something, but no they just stood their laughing at us with their tree laughter.

We were supposed to have a “full crew” of people up there. Myself, my dad, my mom, my brother, two of my brother’s friends, and my cousin-in-law (is that right?) Steve. Of those seven people that were supposed to show up it was my mom, my dad, and myself.

The original plan was to have everyone be there Saturday morning, we work for a while, clean the place up, then spend the weekend playing on sea-doos and fishing. Yeah, that didn’t happen. Instead while the other four people were out “gallivanting” about, (swimming in my parent’s pool no less) we were busting our asses scooping wet and rotting pine-needles into trashcans.

The one plus side to it all was the weather. Ya see, lately in “the valley of the dirt people” (Lake Elsinore, etc.) it was hitting 115 degrees by 10 am and it was so muggy you didn’t so much breath the air as you drank it. But up in Big Bear the temperature was a cool 70 degrees with thunder and lighting, with scattered downpours. With all the heat I forgot what cold weather felt like, it was surreal to be walking around with my umbrella (yes, I always have an umbrella in my backpack) in the middle of July. (For those of you who are not Californian’s keep in mind this never happens, and I mean never). There were a couple times I just walked out into the rain just to remember what if felt like.

Coming home on Sunday was not exactly pleasant though, driving down the mountain, as we descended the temperature ascended. It was horrible, like driving into a wet fart I tell’s ya. By the time we finally reached home we could barely recall what the 70 degrees felt like.

At least I did learn two things this weekend: (1.) While it’s better to be working up a sweat in 70 degree weather than just sitting and sweating in 115 degrees I’d still rather not be working. And (2.) my brother, his friends, and Steve are all assholes, thanks to their lack of help there was no sea-doo-ing.



Exile

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