Tuesday, October 31, 2006

Today's New Adventure. Burning Stuff plus More!

So growing up in West Sechelt we all had our different chores. One of mine was emptying the dishwasher. Another was taking care of the burning. Basically left over paper and that sort of stuff. We had a pit out back I'd take the things and light them up. I don't know if I got the job because they wanted me to burn the paper or they didn't want my brother to. It was always fairly uneventful. Except for the time the fire exploded and as I instinctively turned away I got hit in the back of my thigh. Swatting away at my slightly charred sweat pants I stumbled away and attempted to sort out what had happened. Basically someone (at the time I believed it to be my brother.. now I'm not so certain.. it could've even been me) threw the empty shaving cream container into the waste paper basket and once in the fire it expanded until it blew up and smacked me in the leg.

So I've got some experience with disposal burning. We lived on 7+ acres back then and we'd occasionally burn slash piles for special occasions; like Halloween! Since I've been helping with maintanence at camp for the last while I've been supervising the burning of our little slash piles down by the old fire hall for the last couple times. The pile that we burned today had been building up since the spring. We were going to burn it this spring after one more rain shower that never came. Then it was a dry summer (of course) and a dry fall (until recently). It now being more dampish out, and my last day of work here, today was the fortuitous day!

Dan gathered the equipment and started the fire. To start these puppies up we usually use a propane tank and a tiger torch. A leaf blower can be of assistance to help get some air in there. Today's new adventure is..... that Dan showed me how to operate the backhoe! That was really cool. I kept pushing the pile back onto itself and we burned it up pretty quickly. I also got some experience digging and filling a hole. All in all it was a neat new learning experience and a great last day at Camp.

Gotta jet,
Adios,
Jordan

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