The Day I Broke the Water Line
Yet another by popular demand (and by popular, I mean Carl and Robin.) It was my first week as a seasonal gardener, and I was assigned to work with the guy in charge of the zoo perimeter plantings, who we'll call D. D was possibly one of the laziest, most annoying people I've ever worked with; a large part of his job consisted of trying to find ways to avoid working. He eventually showed me all his boltholes where he'd take naps in the afternoons--seriously, the man had a nest behind an 8' high cotoneaster hedge where he'd hide on nice days. So not surprising that at the end of my first week working for him, he decided he'd leave a little early in the afternoon and left me to water the rosebushes out by the zoo entrance. He showed me the irrigation hookup, which is set below ground level with a lid covering it; you attach the hose to the hookup, then turn a valve which is also set down inside the hole in the ground, and you get a high pressure stream for watering. Fine. Off he goes. And I water, and water, and eventually get to the point where the very long hose doesn't want to reach because it's looped back a bit, and it's too heavy to just drag smoothly along. So I give it a good hard jerk.
Aaaannnnd... the torque effect of my jerking against the hose coupling down below ground level causes the pvc pipe at the hookup to snap. A spectacular fountain of water goes shooting up into the air about 4' high. I yell, "Holy shit!" and go diving onto it like I'm covering a grenade, completely drenching myself in about .2 seconds. Groping around down in the now completely flooded hookup box, I find the piece of the pipe and thinking maybe it just came unstuck, I try to muscle it back onto the valve. The water flow stops, I gasp with relief, and let go of the pipe... only to have it pop off and another jet of high-pressure water go shooting up, this time straight into my face (because of course I was leaning over the thing at the time.)
This happens twice more--without the straight in the face bit--before I decide that it really is BROKEN broken, and since I don't have a radio of my own I can't call for help. So I leave the fountain, which is rapidly flooding the entire entry to the zoo and roaring down the storm drain, and I squish my way over to the administrative building. I'm covered in mud, water, and bits of grass as I walk past some very nicely dressed people from the marketing and development department to get to the security desk and ask them to call the Curator of Horticulture so I can get some help. "What do you want us to tell her?" "Tell her that I... That there's water... look, just tell her to get over here asap, ok?" She finally arrived, surveyed the damage, and said, "The Waters staff told me about your penguin thing, you know." :) Anyway, they had to turn off the main water supply for half the zoo for several hours to fix it, and while I didn't get fired, I cemented my reputation for being accident prone and I believe they still tell stories about me.
Eel story to follow, later.
Aaaannnnd... the torque effect of my jerking against the hose coupling down below ground level causes the pvc pipe at the hookup to snap. A spectacular fountain of water goes shooting up into the air about 4' high. I yell, "Holy shit!" and go diving onto it like I'm covering a grenade, completely drenching myself in about .2 seconds. Groping around down in the now completely flooded hookup box, I find the piece of the pipe and thinking maybe it just came unstuck, I try to muscle it back onto the valve. The water flow stops, I gasp with relief, and let go of the pipe... only to have it pop off and another jet of high-pressure water go shooting up, this time straight into my face (because of course I was leaning over the thing at the time.)
This happens twice more--without the straight in the face bit--before I decide that it really is BROKEN broken, and since I don't have a radio of my own I can't call for help. So I leave the fountain, which is rapidly flooding the entire entry to the zoo and roaring down the storm drain, and I squish my way over to the administrative building. I'm covered in mud, water, and bits of grass as I walk past some very nicely dressed people from the marketing and development department to get to the security desk and ask them to call the Curator of Horticulture so I can get some help. "What do you want us to tell her?" "Tell her that I... That there's water... look, just tell her to get over here asap, ok?" She finally arrived, surveyed the damage, and said, "The Waters staff told me about your penguin thing, you know." :) Anyway, they had to turn off the main water supply for half the zoo for several hours to fix it, and while I didn't get fired, I cemented my reputation for being accident prone and I believe they still tell stories about me.
Eel story to follow, later.