Wrestling Match

I was at a wrestling scrimmage in Sanford when I got the text. Apparently we blew a gasket in Raleigh and needed to do some cleanup at our dispenser.

I was in the bleachers screaming my head off for the Northwood Chargers. This is my third year in the stands, and by now I know a lot of the kids. Including my own. At 105 lbs, Arlo was making his freshman debut. At 138 lbs, Zafer was starting his third season.

When I was in high school I wrestled in the 98 lb category. But here’s the trick: it was in Iowa, where wrestling is religion. Anyone who wrestled varsity in Iowa feels qualified to comment on wrestling in North Carolina.

In the stands I got the suggestion that we get a backhoe to Raleigh to clean up the mess. Katy had taken a bite out of her Saturday to meet our dispenser technician at Larry’s Beans. They concluded a new gasket would fix us right up, but that it would be best to dig out the existing gravel and replace it with new material.

On the way home from Sanford with the boys, it occurred to me that perhaps we could handle this problem by hand. Our spirits were high. Arlo pinned his opponent in the first period of his match. It was touch and go at first, but he landed a hip toss and was able to hold on for the pin. Zafer also pinned his man. He was taken down, scored points on his escape, and managed to convert a reversal into a pin.

I thought, “Who needs a backhoe when you have two teenage wrestlers?”

So I stopped by the house, loaded the old red Dodge with new gravel from our current retaining wall project, tossed on a bunch of shovels and rakes, and the three of us drove to Raleigh and knocked out the problem by hand.

Basically we deployed “human backhoes.”

We occasionally wrestle with the B100 Community Trail. Last spring our Carrboro dispenser went offline for an entire month before we could get it replaced. It pumped 100K gallons to our members before it quit entirely. And replacing it was a bear of a job.

Our Raleigh location has performed well for many years, dispensing about 10K gallons per year. We’ll get it fixed. And we have it cleaned up.

We are deeply grateful to the members who keep us abreast of Trail performance issues, and we do wrestle them back into shape as soon as we can…