I devised a plan to get a rope through the anchor ring at the bottom of my clay pit. The plan had some weaknesses, but it was my best chance at success since I started working on this problem at least a year ago.
For those of you who may not be familiar with the problem, in a nutshell, I installed an anchor with a steel ring at the bottom of the clay pit before I filled it. Since then, I haven’t been able to reach the steel ring to get a rope through it. The problem is that the clay is so thick and deep, that you can’t just reach down to the bottom and pass a rope through, like I had envisioned when I installed the ring.
Today’s plan was to locate the ring with my feet, and push a 5″ sewer pipe down, over the ring, then force as much clay out of the sewer pipe as I could, then fill the pipe with water and mix the remaining clay with the water until I had easy access to the ring at the bottom of the pipe. This is where the plan gets fuzzy. Once I had a semi-clear path to the ring, how was I going to get a rope down the sewer pipe, through the ring, and back up? I had some tricks up my sleeve, but I wasn’t confident they were going to work. I figured I might have to leave the pipe in the pit until I could figure it out.
As these things go, it took a Herculean effort to drive the sewer pipe to the bottom. I did manage to slurry up the clay inside the pipe, so I could tap the ring with a pole. None of my tricks worked to get the rope through the ring, and I discovered I had a new problem; it would take a winch to pull that sewer pipe back up, and I could not get a grip on it at all, because the clay is a great lubricant.
At this point, I had an idea to kill 2 birds with one stone. I would dig out the pipe, and once I had the pipe out, I’d take advantage of the hole it left to reach the steel ring with my hands and thread the rope through. The image on the left will give you an idea of how thick that clay is. I dug about 2 feet down around the pipe, wiggled it, did my best to get a grip on it and pull on it, and even pumped some water around it with the garden hose, to break it loose. When I finally got it to budge, I was standing on the bottom of the clay pit (that’s something I haven’t done in a long time), which put my waistline well below the surface level of the clay. I was bent over so I could reach my toes, and the bottom of the pipe. I got the pipe to come up just enough that I could hook my fingers under it and pull it up, then I grabbed the rope I had ready and ran it through the ring!
I played with my new toy, just a little, before I cleaned up and went in for the night. The sun had just gone down, and setting up a proper bondage predicament was going to take planning, and time. I’m pretty sure there will be some really awesome predicament bondage in the clay pit before June. I’ll keep you posted.