A comedy of errors happened today – except it wasn’t funny.
First off, I ordered gravel to be delivered for our driveway. For the past 3 years, this one company has come to the bottom of our driveway, opened their back a smidge, and then driven slowly up and around our driveway to spread a layer of new gravel.
We did the same thing in Grass Valley, but with a different company.
Well… this time, the company had a new driver, which they didn’t tell me. All they said was that they would dump the gravel in this way, but they wouldn’t spread it. Of course… I knew that… but I asked them if they still did the procedure I described above – and she said YES.
Fast forward to today.
He came and spread the gravel on the driveway, except he hardly made it very far before he ran out. Me, being not that wise to gravel, just thought it didn’t go that far because we needed more this year.
Sigh.
The reality was that he has opened the back to much, and he drove too slowly. So, the gravel was a thick, dense, however very even, pit on our driveway.
I didn’t realize this… so I went down the driveway in my car. It got stuck. I tried to unstick it and we fishtailed into our metal gate post.
Yup. Messed up my brand new car – again.
Yup, my left rear side slammed right into our metal gate post and slid backwards.
It is difficult to understand the prospective here, but that hole you see in the gravel was as deep as my car’s wheelwell. My tire grabbed onto the grass and I went hurling around and backwards into the metal gate post.
THE GOOD NEWS
The good news is that our friend who was kind enough to bury Dodger, came right over with his machine, and smoothed out the driveway in about 10 minutes.
Lesson learned: Great neighbors are a blessing.
He came right over with his huge truck hauling the skid steer. You can see the dust it made trying to even the driveway. He had his back bucket entirely filled with gravel as he spread the overload.
It took him about 10 minutes – a very skilled driver – to use both ends of the skid steer to go up and back a few times to even out the gravel. It spread all the way up to the horses and down to the end of the driveway – instead of all right around the gate.
MORAL OF THE STORY…
Find the joy in every day. Yes, I crashed my car into the metal post. And yes, the company who sold us the gravel took no responsibility for sending out a new driver who didn’t know how to do what we’ve had done for the previous 3 visits…
But, we had a great neighbor willing to come over and fix it… and while I was stuck at home, not able to drive out, I practiced haltering with the newbie Jenny Twins!
The Jenny Twins. They aren’t twins at all… they just came at the same time from a kill pen in Texas.
