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Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Bobcat operator

I will fully admit that I was panicking about securing a bobcat operator and the gravel/sand delivery in the short time frame that we were looking at. It was Thursday and we wanted to get this work done that weekend. As usual, my Dad was nothing but calm and firmly believed that it would all work out (as he always does, and it always seems to). Anyway, I'd noticed a sign on my drive home from work the previous week advertising bobcat operator services. I had pulled over and taken a photo just in case.


I'm glad my Dad was willing to make all the phone calls and talk to the truck drivers and operators because it honestly sounded like sometimes they were speaking a different language. There is definitely a lingo and technical terminology that I did not know.

Well, Dale and his brother were willing to bump a larger job to come and help us out for a half day of work. Very kind of them. We arranged for Dale to show up with his bobcat for 8am on Saturday morning. He also had some contacts for sand & gravel and would arrange for delivery to be at the same time.

The house phone rang at 7am on Saturday morning. I'm still in a stupor, but the phone is closest to my side of the bed, so I answer. It's Dale and he is outside our house with his bobcat ready to get to work. Are you kidding me !?!?! I ask him if knows that he is an hour early and he says he wanted to get an early start so he can have an afternoon off. I wake up my Dad and Derek and we all stumble outside to get started. I also do a quick internet search to make sure we are not violating nay noise bylaws. Low and behold, 7am is the approved start time for a Saturday in Edmonton. At leas the neighbours can't call the city on us.

I think Dale just gets a perverse pleasure in waking people up. He seemed pretty happy with himself.

Anyway, he was a very experienced bobcat operator and made short work of the project. We needed some topsoil removed from the area since the new garage was going to be larger than the old garage. Dale scooped it out and transported it down the alley to a neighbour that needed some fill for his project. This worked well because we didn't have to pay to have the dirt hauled away and we were able to help out the neighbour that let us dump our concrete in his bin.

Supervising the bobcat operation.
Dale's brother showed up to see what was happening and lend a hand. I think he did more talking than working, but even in his dress loafers he had the rake and was helping to spread the sand around.

By noon the sand & gravel was spread around to my Dad's satisfaction and all that was left was to use the plate tamper we had rented from Home Depot to compact the area and do some shovel work on the sides of the area. By the end of the day the ground was all prepared for the concrete...or was it?



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