It Started One Stormy Evening in April

Over the next couple of weeks I was able to cut up most of the top and drag the pieces into the woods. But there were some large trunk pieces that would have to be cut into firewood lengths and rolled to the woods. I figured I would simply rent a Bob Cat one weekend to move them.

The downed tree damaged a white oak and also took down a maple. The white oak had to be cut as well as the single remaining red oak in our front yard. That left another pile of limbs in the front yard and more tree trunks. I also plan to rent a stump grinder to remove the three stumps.

Laurie and I saw a John Deere sub compact utility tractor at the NC State Fair last year and talked about how neat it would be to have one of those. With the train wreck in the front yard I started thinking about how much easier it would be to remove the tree branches and trunks as well as till the front yard in the fall for new grass, IF I had a new tractor. And I had a significant birthday coming up.

So we got the tractor with implements and a Gator for Laurie. I love that thing. I call it Johnny Jr. I grew up around diesel equipment and I used a backhoe to pay for a significant part of my college education so I miss being around equipment. Johnny Jr. scratches that itch. I have a few years of projects in mind around the house.

Below is the backhoe of my teen years. The photo was taken in 1980. Below it is a recreation this year. Laurie and I also made our version of American Gothic.

So with a big birthday coming up, a wreck in the front yard and a sub compact utility tractor with implements, I decided I wanted a water slide for my 60th birthday bash. I've made potatoe canons, trebuchets and 2 liter water rockets but never a water slide. The front yard has to be tilled and reseeded in the fall anyway so why not make a 150 feet water slide in our front yard. So I did.

Version 1.0 did not have enough height at the take off point. I solved that by making a ramp using logs from the big red oak tree. Version 2.0 still was not as fast as I wanted. I solved that be getting the proper material for a sliding mat. Version 3.0 worked pretty well.

See versions 1.0 and 2.0 below.

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I did have one flaw we did not resolve. I bought wheat straw bales to make a circle at the end of the slide and covered them in plastic to make a landing pool (I need the straw bales anyway when I reseed the yard). However version 3.0 was so fast that we blew through the pool and the bales. Oh well.

Here is version 3.0 in use. The slide worked out great. My sister's youngest daughter had a blast.

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I have to say my wife, Laurie, was complicit in all this. She thought it was all a hoot.

I told everyone I did not want any birthday gifts. I just wanted to get my siblings and family together on my birthday. But, if they had to get me something, get me a naughty gnome (Google it). So Laurie, bless her heart, used her Cricut machine over several days, made sixty gnomes and taped them to the walls of the kitchen on the night of my birthday. She also gave me a naughty gnome. That became the theme for my party. She made the yellow t-shirt for me in the first photo at the top.

The tape she used was not very strong so for the next two days we heard gnomes falling to the floor as we sat in the living room. On the day of my birthday bash she told me to decorate outside using the sixty gnomes. I put them in the windows, on tables, the outside sun shade and a bunch of trees. Check them out along the Gator trail I made with Johnny Jr.

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