I've been surveying my whole life...literally. And there have been plenty of times I've questioned whether or not I should have chosen a different path.
But the other day I was looking over some preliminary research of a particularly ugly job and had one of them epiphanies. I was actually glad this mess had landed in my lap and not someone that would have surely messed it up. That's not to say that it's going to be an easy chore by any means. The scope of what it will take to resolve was kind of like a self-extracting zip file as I looked over just the superficial junk.
I guess at my age when you still look at a difficult job and think, "Cool, lookie what I get to do!"....you are probably in the right profession. Guess that's settled...;)
paden cash, post: 429960, member: 20 wrote: I guess at my age when you still look at a difficult job and think, "Cool, lookie what I get to do!"....you are probably in the right profession. Guess that's settled...;)
I can relate to this. Sometimes I get to thinking that I should have done something else over the last 30+ years, but then a job comes in that no one else will even try to survey. I guess it's still the challenge that I really like, or being able to say I did what someone said couldn't be done. I've got a job in front of me on my desk right now that 4 surveyors have attempted, with 4 different outcomes. After almost 50 hours of records research and 35 hours of field crew time, I'm positive that I will have what was original surveyed in 1926. All of this for 1.5 acres. This is fun when the client knows that all it takes to fix this is time and money.:)
Yep. It CAN be fun. Like doing all your research, completing the field work and going back to set the last pin. OOOOOPS, it hits right in the middle of the neighbors manicured lawn. Oh well, it has to be done. Set the pin in the ground and start to hit it with the hammer when CLINK, I hit something. Dig a little deeper and there is an old pipe that didn't register on the detector. About that time the neighbor comes out. "I've been wondering where that old pipe went, I knew it was around there somewhere."
Andy
Told my helper yesterday I was working for about a buck ninety-five an hour on the project we were tackling at that moment. He's observed the research at the courthouse and the digging and shooting we have done so far, but, what he hasn't seen is the hours I have fretted over this gawdawful jigsaw puzzle. I will solve the mystery, dammit, somehow. This is in the middle of a county seat town that I normally avoid like the plague because I know how bad it is. Apparently, plenty of other surveyors avoid it as well or they are too ashamed to allow their work to grace the records in the courthouse.
Once upon a time there was a quarter section all owned by one person. Today there are a hundred homes and a few other things plus streets and alleys and a couple of numbered highways. In the 1880's a lovely plat was created showing the entire quarter section platted out into regular blocks with 25-foot wide lots plus streets and alleys. Within a decade they had that entire plat vacated. About a decade later they un-vacated certain portions. Not much, but some. The tract I'm working with is a metes and bounds variety with one similar to the north and one similar to the south. The next one to the south says it is all of Block 22, including streets and alleys (whatever that really means), of what was originally platted in 1880 something. To the west and the north is a subdivision first platted in 1972, partially replatted in 1977 and partially replatted again in 1978, that shows no monuments and a couple of the streets have no designated width plus some lot dimensions you have to figure out for yourself by comparing other lot and street widths. That little jewel disagrees with the adjoining metes and bounds tracts by seven feet. Across the street to the east of my tract is called out as being fractions of certain lots in the vacated, but nonentheless called for, 1880 something plat. The tracts to the southeast are metes and bounds tracts tied to a quarter-quarter section line. It appears that the east 20 feet of my tract has somehow been taken for city street usage but I have no documentation as to how and when this happened.
My only reason to be there?? "See this gravel driveway. My neighbor says the lady he bought his house from told him he owned it. The guy I bought my house from told me I own it. Where's the property line?"
Love it, love it, love it.
I hope you do get it figured out.
As much as surveying interests me, it's a good thing I didn't try to become a PLS. I couldn't deal with those cases where no one can reach an indisputably correct solution. And I really don't enjoy chiggers, extreme heat, cold, disease-bearing ticks, and angry neighbors.