Once Again, I Fail at Photos

And I really should have photos of A.'s heroic feat of strength yesterday. Not that they could really capture the magnitude of the project he took on yesterday and completed in six hours.

He put in a dock. A full-on, heavy-ass, 40-foot (or something--I'm terrible at estimating length, but it's really long) wooden dock, complete with buried pilings, on our beach. By himself.

We got this dock from A.'s sister, the one who works as a caretaker at a big old house up the road. The guy who owns the house is putting in a new dock and obviously needed to get rid of the old one, so A.'s sister dumped it on the side of the road near our lakeshore. Not that near, though. It was a pretty long haul from where the pieces were dumped to where the water begins. And there was no one to haul it but A.

He couldn't even use the lawn tractor or the truck to help him, because of angles and trees and other assorted impediments. So he tied a rope around these huge, heavy lengths of pressure-treated wood and then tied the rope around his waist, pulling the sections to the beach like a human draft horse. Then he dug out ten holes in the rocks for the pilings. Then he cut the pilings (telephone poles and railroad ties he had lying around, because doesn't everyone keep those things on hand?) and put them in. Then he nailed cross-pieces across each pair of pilings. Then he lifted the sections onto the pilings and secured them with boards on the sides.

Again, entirely by himself. He wouldn't let me help, since I'm carrying Precious New Life and all. Plus, I was trying to keep our current Precious Life from getting crushed underneath dock sections or fatally injured by power tools.

I honestly have no idea how he did it. I've gotten so I take incredible feats of strength on his part for granted, because he's just extraordinarily strong and performs these feats with regularity. But this was way beyond anything I've ever seen him or any other human accomplish.

A. is probably going to find it a little difficult to get out of bed this morning. But now we have a dock. Which I will take a photo of today so you may see the scope of his effort.

Seriously. It was insane.

Edited to add, with the photo, which I'll have you know required me to brave the beach and the sustained 30 mile an hour wind and 40 degree temperature.