Thread: Dumb Dingo Dilemma

I had an interesting 15 minutes on Saturday. SWMBO and I were dismantling the playground equipment at our local primary school. Part of the job entailed digging some lumps of concrete out that had ladder chains attached them. My method was to dig a big trench on one side of the lumps, attach a rope and pull them out.

Just after SWMBO went off to get lunch I was in the middle of pulling one of these lumps of concrete back when the Dingo started tipping forward. Anyone who uses a Dingo will know that this happens all the time, and you usually just hang on until the front bottoms out on something and you lean back to restore equilibrium.

But I had forgotten about the whacking great hole I had trenched. As the Dingo tilted forward into this hole, I leaned back to try and restore the balance. But as it kept on going forward into the hole, I kept going back until I could hang on no longer. Unfortunately, my feet had slipped forward and had lodged under the motor. This meant that as the Dingo was now vertical, with it's rear end aiming at the sky, I was hanging over the back of it with my feet locked in. Not good.

Leaning back I could only just touch the ground with one of my hands, and this allowed me to loosen my right foot until I swung it around and half stood up. I stayed like this for 15 minutes, and it was the longest fiften minutes in my life. My right foot could only just reach the ground on "tip toes", and I didn't have anything decent to hang on to to hold myself up.

There was a dairy farm across the road, and after about five long minutes I got over the embarrassment and started yelling for help, quietly at first, and then flat out.Obviously there was nobody at home. After a while I reached over to the motor and tried to pull the air cleaner cover off, thinking that if I could drop it where my right foot was trying to reach the ground, it might take a bit of the pressure off. By this time I was covered in sweat, my muscles were trembling, and I'd given up on the farmer. When I took the air cleaner cover off I saw the 250 mm long cleaner element, and decided to use it instead. I dropped it down next to my right foot, and was amazed when it landed upright. I took my weight with my arms and lifted my right foot onto it, and wham!, next thing I was climbing on to the Dingo and I was FREE!

I just stayed on all fours on top of it shaking and sweating while feeling came back into my left leg. Then SWMBO turned up and the farmer came wheeling around the corner with his tractor pulling the hay he'd just been to collect. SWMBO was about to laugh at what she thought was me being me again, and getting the Dingo stuck, when she saw my legs in spasm.

In the end there was no damage done. The Dingo cut out for want of oil when this happened and started straight away when it was righted. I'm walking like a penguin, but SWMBO reckons that it's just another sign that I'm turning into a cowboy (I'm learning a few Johnny Cash riffs on the guitar).