Bush-whacking

Usually I never complain about the tasks of a job, since I could be doing a lot worse things, but man, this sucked. 

Before I even rant about what I did today, let's look at the weather:
Average temp: 82 F
Humidity: 88%
Feels like: 89 F

It's one of those dog days of Michigan weather, when you can't tell if it's sweat, or your body collecting moisture from the air. Sticky hot mess.

My task of the day: Measure Right-of-Way fence.
Now many of you probably have no idea what that is. I'll break it down for you. Right-of-Way is the land owned by the government on either side of a road. So yes, the land at the end of your driveway isn't yours, it's the township/city/village's. You just kindly mow it for them.

On the side of highways, the government doesn't like people (or animals) to randomly stumble through the woods (usually drunk) and start walking onto the highway, so they put up a fence. Makes sense. They also want to mark their ROW. Makes sense. But think about how often a fence way the hell on the side of I-94 is maintained. It's not. Why maintain it, it's way the hell from the road?

Next time you are driving down a highway, try to find the ROW fence. Sometimes you can't; it's covered in vegetation.

Now back to the narrative of my day: I was told to measure the ROW fence. In this weather. While it's covered in vegetation. And ticksssssssss. With a boisterous laugh, my task-giver finished his assignment with, "Make sure to bring extra tick repellant! Hahahaha."

The land of tickssss

It was awful. The total length was over 18000' (over 3.4 miles). I had to jump cross a small creek, walk in mud (more like slip-'n-slide), squeeze between the fence and trees, crawl underneath a pine tree spiky with new growth, toter on a concrete bridge drainage slope, scale a dirt hill less than a foot from 70 mph truck traffic (I got honked at twice from semis and countless swerves), climb the fence of thin wires twice, get whacked in the face with branches, and lunge over stumps, all while holding this little metal end of measuring tape and a can of spray paint.

The WORST part? Rose. Bushes. Like monster rose bushes. With thorns about two inches wide and four inches tall. FOR A MILE. (No pictures, because I wanted to get the hell outta there.)

I took some pictures of my journey, but not where it was terrible. Places with enough space to take my camera out, and where I didn't need two hands to squeeze, fight, and climb.

Finally a clearing!! Yummy hot forest.

I would have to search for these marks, stop, make sure the tape is not caught on anything within 200' of me (yeah right, it was caught almost every five minutes) and stand there until I would hear a yell in the distance or see a hand signal to find the next mark.

The tape used to measure was 200', so we would count the number of 200' places we went by making painted lines. I was in the back, thank goodness, so the guy in front cleared the way for me. I was very thankful for that. He also helped me over some of the harder parts of the task, like jumping the creek and the fences. I love working with awesome people! It made the day a lot better.

Hill! I was level with the overpass road. Look at the little cars muhahaha! (This was really scary, cars/trucks couldn't see me if I slid to the bottom into the road, super steep and slippery, don't do this children.)

Little gem at the top of the hill.

And while this was awful, I still prefer this to doing nothing. I like having purpose. It was so nastily hot. I at least sweated and worked off some weekend calories rather than sitting on my bum while sweating. Sweat was inevitable.

Going home to shower. Aww yeah.

This was super lame, but someone has to do it.


EDIT: I forgot the best part! I hardcore parkour'd today. I ran across I-94 and put my hand out, grabbed the top of the concrete barrier, and jump/swung in one fluid movement. It was totally bad ass. I hope the cars enjoyed the awesomeness they witnessed, and find a new-found respect for the MDOT worker.