The ordeal concludes!

After approximately 10,536 continuous years of ditch- and rebar-induced trauma, A Concrete Pour Occurred yesterday! Yay!

I'll have pix later, after I've scavenged them from M's camera. A whole crew showed up before 10am, when the first of the trucks were supposed to arrive. And we waited...and waited...and finally the first truck arrived just before 11. The trucker got lost or something, despite our having positioned a driver in town to guide him. Then the concrete truck couldn't produce pressure for its water hose. Then the pumper couldn't move the mud, because it'd been in the !@#$%@! truck for so long. The subsequent trucks were backed up all day long as a result. At the bitter end, we were all standing around with curled toes waiting to run out of concrete before we ran out of the need for it. "It'll be close," was all the pumper operator would commit to.

But at the end, success! M has been running on adrenalin for the past several days, but his meticulous preparation seems to have paid off in a (at the end of the day, at least) perfect pour. Nothing that went wrong happened on his end, or affected final success. The weather cooperated beautifully - cloudy most of the day, never got hot, it was even a bit too cold for perfect comfort toward the end. We didn't finish up till 5.

The boys spent the day in Gitmo, getting more and more upset at all the diesel noises they were unable to investigate/interfere with. Fresh concrete 2 feet deep in places, and they can't jump in? Unthinkable! But they were good enough that none broke out to join the fun: I rewarded them with special snackies for afters.

We all seem to have spent the morning collapsed in various heaps, though I've heard stirrings here and there.