My Most Stressing Dig Story

It didn't get stressing, technically, till after the dig.

In fact, I'd had a good day-- Muskegon Avenue was torn up all summer, so I had poked around and spotted some sort of insulator that no one can ID-- first pic. I found also the milk-glass platter shard and some sort of unembossed med on its length.

Later I went to a site, now long gone, I had been working on. It was turning up all sorts of things, especially since the destruction crews hit a privy. In fact, the third picture may be the remains of a paper label Besto, a local early Prohibition-era bottle. You can still read some of it now permanently part of the glass.

I'd found some item later ID'd to be used for railroad signal lights. And that gorgeous shard of plate-- so vibrant and bright! Also, part of a 'Mickey Mouse' style of insulator.

Also, I'd narrowly escaped crawling into a hole of wasps (I'd later crawl in during cooler times, where I found nothing intact in what was some crawlspace for machinery repairs of an old factory.)

But my old pack was over-loaded. I went to pick it up as the first few drops of rain fell from the darkening sky above, and suddenly the strap ripped off! I had long known it was quite damaged, but I didn't expect it to suddenly give.

So I rode the first mile out of the industrial area and along the main road toward home, but it was really killing my shoulder and back. I had a paver, a partial brick, much glass, and other items in it beside my normal supplies of shovel, lock, food, water, etc.

So I tried putting it on my lap-- but that made it too difficult to peddle; as it was my mom's girl's bike (no cross-bar) instead of my broken boy's bike, I couldn't balance it on the bar that wasn't there.

I tried putting it on the back fender but couldn't get it to stay.

Tying it on using its own straps, I ran into major issues-- and by this time it was raining.

The pack was too heavy, so it kept the fender rubbing quite audibly against the wheel. Also, the strap would often get caught in the spokes, thus slamming on the breaks.

I eventually gave up with that.

I tried the front fender, thus tying it not to the seat where it also kept falling to the side-- thus getting caught in the chain, spokes, pedals, etc-- but tying it to the handle-bars.

But, of course, that didn't work either. And I had to dump stuff in a 'safe' place I never returned to. What's in the pics is what I came back with, plus my own supplies.

Still, the wheel I couldn't let continue to attack the fender, so I tried balancing it-- tied-- on my handle-bars.

But it kept shifting, as it was uneven. Thus would my bike veer one direction or another. It also made straight steering too difficult-- and I couldn't have it hang from one side, either.

So I was quite unhappy: It was raining harder, it was getting fairly dark, I was struggling with a heavy pack on a bike's handle-bars and trying to maneouver my way back home including up hills.

What should have been 20 minutes-- when I'm flying and without much traffic-- turned into an hour of struggling with worthless finds I only bring back because it's my hobby.

And I got home, wet, aching, and with a good headache on that dark evening. I'm also hypoglycemic, so my blood-sugar was getting fairly low too.

It was a very stressing ride. I liked it better when I ran over a nail miles away from home and had to push my bike back.