Anecdotals...

This is the thread in which anyone may contribute an anecdote about themselves along with a related puzzle of any sort. Wordplay, quirks of logic, obscure knowledge, even the odd bit of math(s) are all welcome. The only restriction is that it must be derived from some story about the poster.

Ideally, we'll all get a bit more acquainted, see some interesting P&P, and maybe have the odd laugh.

How about it?

sounds great - you go first 😛

I commute each working day, apart, of course, from the days when I'm on holiday; those are great days - sometimes I play tennis, which I love.

When I'm not on holiday, I commute, as I said. To work. My journey is, as near as dammit, 12 kilometers each way, from Fulham into the City. Oh, and I do it on a scooter.

I get 30 days holiday a year, not including bank holidays, and am 'sick', on average, maybe, say, 5 days per year.

My scooter cost me 1700 pounds, including my helmet and a lock. I had to pay 90 pounds for a pair of trousers to stop my best bits getting wet when the rains come and have paid a further 30 pounds for a waterproof bike cover.

Petrol costs me about 290 pence per gallon and I get almost exactly 70 miles to the gallon.

I started commuting at the end of November last year. I used to pay 80 pounds a month for a tube pass.

I would never go back to the tube. That used to take me between 60 and 90 minutes. My scooter journey takes a maximum of about 30 minutes.

Although I am mentally already better off, can anyone tell me when I'll be able to say that I am financially better off than if I had carried on with the tube?

My favorite summer as a kid...

Would have to be 1959. I was 11 years old that summer. I got to work in the logs with my grandpa Pete Shumway. We had 30,000 board feet of dry lodge pole pine permitted from the forest service at a place called Labarge Meadows, between Afton and Labarge, Wyoming. I learned how to fell trees, limb and log'em using a story pole. But best of all, I got to do most of the dragging. Grandpa preferred to do most of the felling, as it is most dangerous. I got to use (my choice) either a Cat model 22 tractor, or one of two work horses. "Becky" was the smaller of the two, and had a heart as big as Wyoming. She didn't know the meaning of "quit". "Ted" was a mean old stubborn red beast who would just as soon kick you as look at you. Grandpa named him after my dad, actually. Ted was much bigger and stronger than Becky, so on big logs, i would use him if it was too steep for the 22, and it usually was.

Up at 4:30 and breakfast and coffee. Fetch the hobbled horses. Grandpa would sharpen the saw's and single bits while i curried the horses. He would harness Ted while I did Becky. On with the harness, do up the haynes, belly strap and cooper. Rig the reins and rig up double chains on single tree... Then up to the trees about 5:30 or six. It is still pretty dark at that time of morning even in summer... when you are surrounded by 4000 meter mountains on all sides.

Grandpa would fell the first three trees and once clear i would start limbing using a kant hook and single bit axe. Only destroyed 1 shoe the whole summer, which is pretty good. Grandpa would finish cutting another 12 trees or so, then he would come back and start logging. I ran the "numbing stick" ... basically a pole 10 feet long with notches at foot long intervals. Grandpa would look at the limbed tree and yell, "Give me a 16, a 10 and an 8!", and with the numbin'stick in the left hand and an axe in the right, i would chop a "v" , marking his cut, being very careful to always add at least 8 inches. Saw mills will screw you royally if your length is even close to standard board lengths.

We never stopped for lunch. A habit that I can't break to this day. If you are working hard, you have no appetite. Strange but true. Then came the fun part. Skidding the logs down to the trucks where we usually built a flat spot on a rather steep slope. Then you drag the logs into place on the up hill slope and using Kant hooks and poles, you lever the logs onto the truck. When we had both trucks loaded, we would unharness the horses, hobble them and turn them loose for the night. They would make their way down into Labarge meadows and enjoy the good grass and mountain stream water. Grandpa would drive the old blue Gimmy 2 ton and I got the brand new green chevy. Twenty miles over the top of Commissary Ridge at 11,000 ft. and down to Afton. All dirt road and mostly in granny and over... some in second and under. Six to seven ton per load and as grandpa would put it... "A pretty damned good jag today, Bunga!"... he called me that for the size of my ears, i think.

Unload at either Schwabs or Gardner brothers mill, get our tally and pay. Fill em with gas, drop off the payments to any and all and leave any extra with grandma out in Osmond. She would usually have a nice supper fixed for us. A quicky shower or bath. Then back up the canyon, over the divide, and into camp about 9 PM. A little chat about the old days when grandpa ran his team's of freight between Afton and Montpelier Idaho, or about the CCC camps and supplying them with food and supplys. Or building the very road we used for logging. Grandpa and several Afton men were pretty much responsible for building it at the end of WW I. Then to sleep and up the next day. Six days a week, but on sunday, we went to church.

Enough of that... It was fun... Now to the trivia questions.

1 - Which can out pull the other? A Caterpiller 22 tractor or 2 Work horses? I lost a dollar bet to grandpa on this one.

2 - Which part of a work harness is most unpleasant to connect? And Why?

View the 22 Cat at this sight...

http://www.tractorshed.com/contents/tstp343.htm

Originally posted by StarValleyWy
My favorite summer as a kid...

Would have to be 1959. I was 11 years old that summer. I got to work in the logs with my grandpa Pete Shumway. We had 30,000 board feet of dry lodge pole pine permitted from the forest service at a pla ...[text shortened]... is sight...

http://www.tractorshed.com/contents/tstp343.htm

I was unaware that Immanuel Kant had a hook named after him 😉. From now on I shall have to refer to bbarr (whose avatar is Kant) as "Captain Hook". Great story though 😀! I really enjoyed reading it. I would venture to guess, based on the fact that you lost that bet, that two work horses can put the Cat to shame.

I'd have no idea on the harness though....I'd say anything near the horse's mouth (interesting pun material there) wouldn't be too pleasant, but near his arse would be bad too (one could be kicked or worse).

Originally posted by royalchicken
I was unaware that Immanuel Kant had a hook named after him 😉. From now on I shall have to refer to bbarr (whose avatar is Kant) as "Captain Hook". Great story though 😀! I really enjoyed reading it. I would venture to guess, based on the fact that you lost that bet, that two work horses can put the Cat to shame.

I'd have no idea on the harne ...[text shortened]... ) wouldn't be too pleasant, but near his arse would be bad too (one could be kicked or worse).

Dang! You spotted my pun. The spelling is actually "Cant Hook" which is a bastardization of "cantilever" i am sure.

Actually, I lost because I bet on the horses. The big horse <Ted> could easily drag a 26 inch diameter by 40 foot tree down hill. The 22 couldn't, or at least usually couldn't. So I bet on the horses. Problem was that I forgot the horse had a mind. It would "eye" up the pull and use leverage and lift by lungeing into the pull. I wasn't even aware of it, because it is so natural, but one learns to help the horse by propper and effective choker cable attachment. If you choke at the end of the log, the horse can't generate much lift. If you choker back a couple of feet onto the log, the horse can lift about three inches with each lunge. The tractor couldn't generate any lift, so it was all "dirt level" dragging. The log would dig into the dirt and stumps and brush and soon you were going nowhere fast. So i bet on the horses. Problem is, surface area... eight horse hooves compared to the tractors track area. The tractor easily outpulled the horses on the flat. Again, you could see the horses sizing up the pull. They really knew they had no chance and acted accordingly. A very minimal effort. Smart.

The worst part of the harness is the "cooper strap" which straps under the tail to keep the harness aligned on the beast. Horses who eat green grass and have lots of water are kind of like a big gas-bomb waiting to go off... They seem to smile and definitely have a grin on their face when they feel you lift their tail. Kind of like pulling grandpa's thumb. Nuff Said.

Ah. Velly gut then. You were quite the observant 11-year-old...

I had an excellent teacher. Grandpa never went to school. His father died when he was 4 years old. He took up any kind of work he could get. Rural wyoming in 1900 was pretty wild. At age 9 he made his first trip with a freighter... four horse team on a freight wagon that could haul about a ton of goods. The nearest rail road is in Montpelier Idaho, which is just about 50 miles on the old Crow Creek road. He made two trips a week working for Tolmans. They ran the way-station, which was about half way to Montpelier. By the time he was 12, he had his own team and pretty much supported his two younger siblings until they got out of high school. He met my grandmother at the way station when he was 22 years old. She was cooking for the Tolmans at the time.

Grandpa never doubted for a minute that an 11 year old could handle a mans job. He had done so himself at a much younger age. He always made sure to explain the danger and what to do in emergencies, but then it was up to us grandkids to use our brains. If he ever caught you doing something dumb, he had a way of not saying anything, but just correcting the mistake. It only took one or two times like that to make you pretty much think things through before you did anything really stupid.

For example... I got a big log stuck on a stump and was using some rather colorful language on Becky. He didn't say a word, but just walked over and took the rein's. He "Whoa Back" ed the horse, undid the single chains and led her to the other end of the log. He set the chocker with one hand, attached the chain and withing 20 seconds had the log out of the mess i put it into. "Don't fight the horse. She's working a hell of a lot harder than you are. Use your head." he said as he handed me back the reins. Conversely, the nicest and best compliment I ever got was the first time i realized that a horse could be over-worked. They are so powerful that you tend to not notice. This one time, i thought that it would be a good idea to let the horse rest, but I didn't want grandpa to think i was lazy. I took a chance, found a stump to set on and let the horse blow for about 10 minutes. Grandpa came over and said. "Good job. Might make a horseman of you yet."

Indeed you did have an excellent teacher. That seems (in my essentially worthless opinion) like one of the best ways to raise a kid: give them something actually useful to do, and let (and help) them do it.

If you are contributing you are important. Not once in that entire summer (or any other) did the subject of "pay" or "money" come up. "We" earned the money. "We" paid the bills. "We" did everything as a team, just doing what needed doing. I can't remember ever being paid for work in the family. If work needed doing, you did it. I have my 7 year old grandson cutting pfitzers and loading the branches in the pickup. His pay is that he gets to drive the pickup to the dump. This requires a little enginuity trying to avoid cops, but that is a small problem compared to the rewards. My 4 year old (grandson)is watering dry spots with the hose each day. His pay is he gets to use the line trimmer. That is a sight. It weighs about as much as he does, but he just lights up when he gets that trigger in his hand and revs the motor.

Mark... I value your opinion, so don't sell it short. Be Nice! Even to yurseff !

I think this is a very good way to operate...even on a grander scale. I just say my opinion in that matter is none to informed, because I have never been solely responsible for a child for more than 12 hours. I'm just remembering the way my upbringing was and is approached by my parents (although they no longer try to exert any major authority-they are good friends who feed me and are going to try and put me through college).

I'm betting they have done just fine. You seem to have personal integrity. That only comes from having had a a good example to follow. If you work at college, your parents will be rewarded perhaps more than you. Parents worry much more about their kids than they do about themselves. At least that has been my experience so far.

I am reading Steven Pinker's "The Blank Slate" this week-end. It has much to say about "having a good example" <DNA PUN> to follow. He is pretty much 50-50 as to Nature/Nurture. I think that is about right myself.

Originally posted by StarValleyWy
I'm betting they have done just fine. You seem to have personal integrity. That only comes from having had a a good example to follow. If you work at college, your parents will be rewarded perhaps more than you. Parents worry much more about their kids than they do about themselves. At least that has been my experience so far.

I am reading Steven Pi ...[text shortened]... UN> to follow. He is pretty much 50-50 as to Nature/Nurture. I think that is about right myself.

Yeah, maybe. But there are enough people you hear about who come from absolutely miserable backgrounds and don't reflect that at all, and vice versa. But maybe that's just misinterpretation or a wierd opinion of what's miserable. I wonder. Incidentally, I've spent much of the evening making the Apostles Clan web site for kirksey957. If you've got a minute you might find it funny:

www.geocities.com/rhpapostles

😵 Nice. I especially appreciated the "charlie and Bertie" reference. Very subtle, but good. Nice babes, fur's, racoonish in_fur_ences and all. Poor Kirk. He might have to buy knee pads to recoup from the 'babe's' page. Lot of repenting gunna need doing there!😉 Just hope he doesn't develop a case of "Carter Heart"... you know, that "lusting" thing.

Originally posted by StarValleyWy
😵 Nice. I especially appreciated the "charlie and Bertie" reference. Very subtle, but good. Nice babes, fur's, racoonish in_fur_ences and all. Poor Kirk. He might have to buy knee pads to recoup from the 'babe's' page. Lot of repenting gunna need doing there!😉 Just hope he doesn't develop a case of "Carter Heart"... you know, that "lusting" thing.

Hehe...thanks muchly. Erm, the Charlie & Bertie thing was so subtle that I don't quite know what it is 😕. Incidentally, when you shock RHP with your rapidly expanding chess skillz this fall, I'd recommend joining or forming a clan. I can just imagine Kirk's Playboy interview...