OT, but since nearly everyone's in on the joke regarding Lake Bermuda....
Was making good progress with the rented excavator, only occasionally getting it stuck, but getting it unstuck pretty easily.
Was dipping out the channel through the dam to drain the water away from the backhoe and the beginning of the ramp the previous guy was digging down to it, and dropped a load of dirt and sat there pondering all the water coming off the bucket. Ponderment became puzzlement as I noticed the water wasn't so much running off the bucket as it was spraying all over the place, especially when I'd operate any control.
Was pretty sure pretty quickly what was wrong.
Turned off the machine and the spraying stopped.
Got out and saw that a rock about twice the size of my fist had fallen into the works *behind* the bucket and chewed up the hydraulic lines.
Just called the rental place to tell them which lines need replacing and that they'd better bring a LOT of oil and they said they'd "try" to get someone out here today to work on it but couldn't promise.
So, imagine waiting for the cable guy. To the 4th power.
Guess we'll see how much work I can get done from my home laptop on dialup.
The excavator is a pretty darned intimidating machine to work with. Big. Powerful. If I had enough chains and could get close enough, it feels like this thing could simply lift the backhoe out of the lake and haul it up to dry ground. And at angles that have my buns biting the seat, it gives no indication that it wants to tip.
The 360-degree rotation is a lot of fun and terribly useful, too.
Biggest challenge right now, besides just getting it working again, is that I really need to get it to the other side of the dam, where a couple of car-size rocks are causing most of the remaining damming to happen. I was working myself that direction, working slowly up the dam while scalping it for material to run the tracks on at a less-scary lean angle, dipping out the channel along the way.
