The Stones Come to Pacific Grove

Please allow me to introduce myself. I'm a man who delivers rocks.

Our nifty little retaining wall will be made up of cast "stone" blocks that interlock together like really big LEGO bricks. You can find these in all different types, colors, and sizes, and we eventually settled on the style we liked. They had to be special-ordered (who would keep these in stock?), but that only took about a week.

Kathy and I made bets on how much the blocks would cost. My guess was lower; hers was higher. We were both wrong. It actually cost less than half of my low estimate. Bonus!

On the other hand, we were way off on the weight, and this proved to be punishing. They'll deliver the rock to the curb, but not onto the property. That's your responsibility.

I have to hand it to the driver/forklift operator, though. That guy is an artist with heavy equipment. He parked his huge truck in the middle of our street, casually blocking all the traffic, then unloaded his forklift off the back and proceeded to whirl it around like he was a circus performer on a unicycle. The entire load of blocks was on the ground in under five minutes, including lining them up nice and neat on the sidewalk. He could probably rearrange eggs in a carton with that thing.

Once he was gone we really missed him, because now we had to get all those same blocks into the backyard by ourselves. And quickly, too, since they were blocking the driveway. And it's uphill...

The invoice told us we'd just taken delivery of 7284 pounds of blocks. That's 3.5 freakin' tons! The largest and heaviest blocks weigh 75 pounds apiece; even the smallest ones come in at 18 lbs. Kathy would load three or four of these into the wheelbarrow and push them up the ramp to the backyard. I'd take a pair of the big ones on a hand truck. Over and over, rinse, repeat. If we'd been smart, we would've hired a couple of guys from the Home Depot parking lot.

By the time we finished we'd dead-lifted a total of 7 tons because, of course, you have to lift each stone at least twice: once to get it off the pallet and onto the wheelbarrow, and again out of the wheelbarrow onto the ground. That doesn't even count the work involved in humping it all up the ramp to the backyard. We figured we'd earned ourselves a greasy burger from the joint down the street.

If you need us, we'll be in the Home Depot parking lot.