Look! There is a thing!

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I do. Because I live alone, and take care of two horses and work on a couple of acres (the other three I leave for the animals), I have a lot of occasion to appreciate wheels. When I get hay in the summer -- the folks at the feed store load my truck, but I have to put it in the barn. Those bales of alfalfa average 60 - 75 pounds. I can balance one on my thighs and duck-walk it to the forming stack at the back of the barn -- about 25 feet. But multiply the effort by 12 -- the number of bales I can load on the truck at one time -- and it gets real tough by about bale #3. Better if I drag it, hoisting one end with the hay hooks and letting the other end follow like the end of a travois. (Pfft! Mozilla's internal dictionary didn't recognize travois.) But even that puts weight (less, but still noticeable) on my back and shoulders. Much better to put two bales on my garden wagon (thus halving the back-and-forth trips from truck to end of the barn), wheel it to the stack, unload, and repeat.

This week, I've been clearing out the broken and discarded bricks from around the house. (Yes, yes, I've been in here more than 5 years, and just now getting to it. Shush!) I'm putting them in a big pile in an out-of-the-way corner. (Plenty of those on 5 acres.) And how do I get them to that growing pile? With my wagon, of course!

And, at least one time while using my wheels -- hay in the wagon, or groceries on my little folding dolly, or taking all my speech gear to the next-door school in my folding, wheeled cart -- I send up a little thought to the unnamed and unknown person who invented the wheel. In the past, I've always considered it to be Og the caveman.

But this winter, I reconsidered. A couple of times, I had to carry buckets of water to fill up the horse-tub. It doesn't happen often; my outdoor faucet is wrapped with heat tape, so it doesn't freeze. After filling the tub, I always disconnect the hoses to let them drain so that, if when it freezes, there's no connection to the faucet for ice to back up and maybe break something. (I have a short hose leading from the faucet, which I connect to a long hose leading to the tub, or the long hose leading to the tadpole pool, or the long hose for watering the trees... Easier to change those out when you have space to use two hands, instead of reaching up to where the faucet is. And that's where I disconnect.)

Even in midwinter, we rarely have more than three days in a row when the temp stays below freezing. In other words, in the late afternoon, I can usually fill the horse-tub. And I do, every day -- so that, if we have a prolonged (by our standards) freezing spell, the horses start with as much water as possible -- which stays ice-free because I use a stock-tank heater. If the hose is frozen, a full tub will last them for three days, and by then we've usually had a warm enough day to thaw the hose and let me refill the tub.

But if I have to carry buckets, there are logistics to consider. The average 5-gallon bucket, when loaded, is difficult for me to handle. The weight is doable, but it all hanging from one hand and pulling unevenly on my spine, not so great. Also, I'm so short that the bucket is hanging low enough to interfere with my walking. Solution: I use two, 2-gallon buckets. The weight is evenly balanced with a bucket in each hand, my spine isn't pulled cockeyed, and the buckets are far enough off the ground that I can walk normally.

But the process is time-consuming. Fill two buckets, but don't turn on the faucet full blast or the water just jumps out of the buckets, wait for the hose to drain into the buckets (don't want to waste the water, or come back to an ever-growing puddle from the drainage), then walk about 30 feet to the tub... and after two trips, I calculated it would take me 14 or 15 more. There had to be a better way...

I have a number of 18-gallon Rubbermaid totes around; I use them to hold pre-measured hay when I'm leaving town, so it's quicker/easier for the neighbor to feed. I grabbed a clean one from the house, put it in my wagon, then filled it with the short hose. I could [a] turn the water on harder, which shortened the filling time and [b] have to wait for hose-drainage once instead of 5 times. Then I pulled it to the tub -- with the lid on, there wasn't much splash-over -- and used the 2-gallon bucket to scoop the water into the horse tub until the tote was light enough to lift and pour out the remaining water into the tub. I made three trips, instead of the estimated 14. \o/

But on one of those trips, while pulling the wagon full of loaded water-tote, and appreciating wheels all over again, it occurred to me that it probably wasn't Og who invented the wheel. See, I've watched guys when doing physical labor. If they can muscle through the job, they tend not to look for an easier way. More often, they seem to take pride in how tough the job was, but they managed. Then there's me. I'm pretty strong for my size and gender, but I learned long ago that it's not enough, and I have to look for something to help me out. Sometimes it's a male friend or coworker, but only after I've exhausted other creative possibilities. (I have literally taped a wrench in place to hold a nut so I could unscrew the bolt from the other side. Or, carried two smaller buckets instead of one larger.)

So, I got to thinking about the caveman dragging his kill back to the cave. And the cavewoman who had to drag her kill, but she had to work so much harder to do the same job, simply because she doesn't have male muscles. So she got creative, and thought up a way to make the job easier. I have no idea what, or how she got from there to a wheel, but I'm pretty well convinced that it wasn't Og who was the inventor, but Ogina!


So -- all hail Ogina, whose wondrous idea has made life so much easier for millions of her descendants! Tomorrow is the first day of spring, which seems a most auspicious time to offer a toast in her memory. *~clink~* I will think of her often, in fervent gratitude that she gave us the lowly wheel.
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This morning, ebonypearl has a stunning post. It's a deep, thoughtful analysis of what could be done to offset, possibly alleviate, the types of violent acts that have so recently made the headlines. Go, read; it's awesome. Now if we could only get the politicians to read and help implement...
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