Jumpin' Jack Flash, It's a Gas Gas Gas

Coming back home after spending a lovely Memorial Day weekend spending lovely money on new furniture and such, we were eagerly looking forward to the scheduled installation of the new gas line and meter. Which gives you a good idea of how exciting our lives had become. Anyway, it was set for Tuesday, May 26th. That day it rained. It rained the next day, too.

On Thursday the 28th, a caravan of four vehicles pulled up in front of the house around 3PM. We had been told they'd be here around 10AM, so I had taken the day off, but apparently our transcontinental pipeline had been delayed - I was shocked, too. Eight workers alight from their trucks, the supervisor comes over to introduce himself to both me and our contractor, gives us a brief explanation as to what will be happening, and then they all break for lunch. Getting out of trucks takes more out of people these days than it used to, I guess.

After their half-hour break, two of the workers begin setting up cones in the street in front of the house. Then, they stand guard, because it turns out their sole purpose is to divert traffic away from the trucks and the work being conducted.

Let me explain a little about our block. It's a cul-de-sac, with 23 houses. The only vehicles on our street are those driven by people who live here, people visiting people who live here, or people delivering things to people who live here. It isn't the Autobahn. So the whole idea of "diverting traffic" gives our neighborhood far too much credit, but I'm just glad we're not paying per worker.

The supervisor asks me if we have a sprinkler system, which we do. That means they can't just backhoe across the lawn - a development with which I am supremely happy, since writing checks to the sprinkler company has lost some of its cachet - but instead they'll have to do something they call "moling." First, they break up a hole in the street, about three feet square, where our gas line branches off the main. Then they dig another hole about the same size further down the street where the new junction will be. A third hole is dug along the front of the house where the meter will be installed, as any new meters must be on the front of the building instead of the side so the gas company can do drive-by meter readings with a laser. Finally, they dig a fourth hole in the middle of the lawn in a straight line between the one near the house and the second hole in the street.

Once they've finished digging, an airhose is connected to one of the trucks, with this Austin Powers-looking probe attached to the end of it along with some plastic tubing, and one guy climbs into the second hole which is about four feet deep. He pushes the probe into the dirt, aims it at the hole in the lawn where the second guy stands, a huge compressor kicks on, and the probe slowly but loudly starts thump-thump-thumping its way under the street, the curb, and the front half of the lawn. About thirty minutes later the point of the probe becomes visible in the hole in the middle of the lawn where Second Guy removes it, then he begins the entire process over again from that hole toward the house. Lo and behold a new gas pipe has been run from the street to the house, and no sprinklers were harmed in the making of this project.

Then, the new meter is attached to the wall (after I convince them to install it as low to the ground as possible and not next to the living room window which they would have done had I not been here to stop them), the old junction is disconnected in the street, the new one connected, the holes filled in, and before you can say "what's that smell?" everything is up and running at about 7:30 that night. We're ready to go. Yup. Ready.