The Deck - Part Deux (Or Is it Doh!?)

I was hoping you all would get a laugh out of my goofy demolition story. The saga of the deck just continues. Here is part two of "the project."

So, my daughter and I went to City hall and applied for the building permit. The chief inspector was there. He shook our hands. Took a very long look at each of us, and repeated our names a couple of times - as if preparing himself to be able to recognize our obituaries in the newspaper after we dug the postholes. He almost had a look on his face of "You poor fools. You have no idea what's in store for you!" But he kept his comment to himself.

Once I picked up the auger, I realized that in spite of her can do/never say die attitude, there was no way my tiny little daughter and I were going to be able to handle that auger. So, I prepped the holes - dug all six of them about 18 inches to 2 feet deep. All my son-in-law and I had to do was to plop the auger in the hole and dig down another 18 to 24 inches. Piece of cake! Right?!?

...or not. We got the auger started and it dug like crazy. It pulled itself into the earth like there was no tomorrow. Then we tried to lift it out. Uh, I said LIFT. Um, no go. I said, LIFT!!! Nothing happened. The auger had dug itself into the earth, and it seemed like there was little or no chance of our freeing it from its self-dug grave. But the devilish thing cost me $90 to rent, and I knew I had to get it back to the rental store. So, my son-in-law got out a tiny plastic trowel, and we took turns reaching into the hole and digging out what seemed like tiny spoonfuls of dirt. We eventually got down to the auger blade, and once we did, it was somewhat easier to pull it out of the hole. When we got it fully extracted, with its extension still on it, I realized that the handlebars were nearly up to my armpits.

By this point, both my son-in-law and I were tired, but we rested up and got ready to take a stab at digging posthole #2. Then the digger wouldn't start. We pulled. We adjusted the choke. We pulled and pulled again. Nada! Zip. Not even a burp out of the stupid machine. By this point, my arms were already aching and my son-in-laws back was, too. We agreed we'll try a smaller machine and dig down from there to the official 42" frost level. So, tomorrow is another day. Maybe we'll get this deck built. Miniatures are looking better and better every moment as we go further into the holes!!!
:o)
Geo.