By Chance or By Appointment

I knew something was up the moment we pulled up the driveway of our new house a few weeks before closing and we saw the orange stakes on the side of it. In my work world, wooden stakes with marking paint in bright colors mean dig here, don't dig here, we're putting this here, etc.

Asked the owners IMMEDIATELY when we got to the top of the driveway. They knew nothing. Walked down later to eye ball them up myself. Did not look like much but stakes are stakes with flagging tape no less.

Called Did Safe NY and asked nicely if they had any record of a one call being done in my area. See, buried things are bad to dig into for obvious reasons so by law, you must request clearance for any project and I had my suspicions...

I was told that perhaps they were telecom due to the orange color and they had recently worked in the area. Thought it sounded fishy fishy in my brain but let it be.

See, THE MAN when he looked at the house without me told me about the gas pipeline right of way that ran along the driveway and even took me down to look at it via facetime on his iphone. I told him to relax. It had been there for frigging forever (1963 to be exactly) and likely just fine. BUY THE HOUSE ALREADY were my exact words.

So when the pipeline land guy showed up the door and said, this is not going to be fun for you....I was a bit sideways. I mean I had PROMISED all would be good. Having worked in this industry, I thought of eight good reasons things wouldn't go well. If it were a DIRT driveway, one wouldn't likely care except the part about not being able to get out. Blacktop = $$

Thankfully Chance, the project lead on the dig up the side of Mitra's new black top driveway was pretty clever and got a nice rubber track back hoe to do the job. See, turns out it was just a scratch on the side of the pipeline. In fact, things are buttoned back up already and just waiting for some grass seed.

I am glad the excitement is over because for a few days I was quite worried. THE MAN was giving me a hairy eye ball everytime I brought it up.

Alright one last photo. Who doesn't like watching men work? Besides you need to see the pipeline.

By tomorrow there will just be grass seed to show for all the fun. No doubt the birds are already making plans. The wildlife around here keeps a good handle on where the food is!

Happy Tuesday!