Call it one or the other, or get a better gun

I have been wandering about the house this afternoon wearing my latest acquisition- a pair of half-chaps. Chaps are leather things that wrap around your legs to protect them from whatever. I think motorcycle dudes wear them. Cowboys wear whacking big ones that go the length of their legs and flap about. English gentlemen wear boots, or jodhpurs (Province in India/riding breeches), or sometimes subdued, snobby versions of cowboy chaps.

Half-chaps are for people like me who would rather not wear huge things, or spend a couple hundred dollars on a pair of (gorgeous) riding boots. They only cover your leg from the knee to the ankle, but that's all that matters.

On a Western saddle the part where you put your foot (stirrup) is attached to the saddle with a generous amount of smooth leather against which your leg can rest comfortably. English saddles are more stingy. The stirrup is attached by two thin leather straps which move back and forth and pinch your legs abominably. Nasty English.

I've been doing more riding recently, and am planning on continuing through the summer- on an English saddle. So, to keep myself from sporting a permanent row of bruises I drove to yon local huge saddle store and bought me-self chaps.

I love riding, and I hope to continue riding for the rest of my life, but I think this is the first time I have ever invested any money in riding. I haven't bought anything related- not even a riding helmet. Which I really could have used. I remember so many summer afternoons (Rachel, Frith?) tearing madly through the puckerbrush on horseback, barefoot, bareheaded, and brainless. We jumped and swam and thundered about and fell off repeatedly. And at the end of the day we would compare legs to see who had the most scratches.... sigh. Them were the days.

Where was I? Oh yes! investment. I was saying I hadn't ever invested in riding. Wait! There was, I suppose, the time I tied that rather flighty Appaloosa mare named Marcy to the MacCauley's water pump spigot and then sprayed her with the hose. She leaped into the air like a Pegasus and I spent most of the summer paying for a new pipe to replace the one she bent.

Anyway! I am pleased as punch with my new chaps, and I am happily anticipating putting them to good use in the next couple days. Though I admit they kind of make me look like a biker.


On to surveying.

I am learning about surveying! Isn't that cool? Blake T. is the engineer for a new bridge going up at the park across the road. He has his own equipment, but no crew I guess, so he got, Daniel, and David and me to help him out.

Actually he had already surveyed for the bridge twice, but the client didn't like the placement and picked a new spot. Blake T was sure it wouldn't fit where he wanted it. Our job was to help him find out if there was the necessary 7 1/2 feet between two large trees. The client wants the bridge between them without cutting them down. Sounds easy to figure out? It wasn't. Because it wasn't just a matter of running a tape measure. The bridge is really long, so moving it a wee bit at one end can make a big difference at the other end; possibly bringing it up against other obstacles.

We spent three hours learning how to use a transit (15 minute gun, Derrick, and whoohoo don't I feel smart to know what that means!) to shoot center lines and angles and plot trees that might be in the way, and then how to use a level to plot the elevation of temporary bench marks and tree roots. So many interesting facts about plumb bobs and angles and degrees, minutes, and seconds and tenths of a foot...

I kept on getting confused about how to read the angles and was all nervous that I was going to get it wildly wrong. The transit we used was only accurate down to 15 minute incriments. That meant that when I called the measurement there was a wee bit of guessing. I had to decide if it was closer to the 15, 30, 45, 0r 60 line. So what if it was exactly between two lines?

"Call it one or the other, or get a better gun," was the answer. In other words, this instrument only gets that close, and if you wanted it any closer, you should have brought the more powerful instrument.

There must be some life principle in that, but if I work it out it sounds too much like 'Just leave it, its good enough,' or 'this isn't a masterpiece, you know.' Sort of a lowering of standards.

But that isn't what it meant.

Anyway, I had a blast! Blake T. is a great teacher and besides that, he did all the really 'interesting' math. I just got to peer through the instruments and yell at Daniel to plumb the rod. Poor Daniel; I think found it all less amusing because he was the rod man and had to stand in the hot sun keeping an 8-foot pole steady for ages. Or run around measuring the circumference of trees with David. And pick up ticks.



So yay for surveying equipment and half-chaps!