We worked on a survey for a gal that had an octagon shaped house in the middle of a heavy brush field. The house had a copper roof and copper rods driven into the ground on all of the corners. In the middle of the house there was a large crystal suspended like a chandler. It was a one room house. Her religion involved absorbing "powers" from the earth.
As I searched for corners, I would be literally crawling through the brush on my hands and knees, and suddenly pop out into a small clearing with sticks stacked on the ground in the shape of the Star of David. Half burned candles at all the points.
No trail in or out. This happened several times and it really creeped me out - almost seemed satanic.
Worst part of the survey was the fact that she insisted that we not cut a single twig of brush. Very difficult survey.
I recall all that Jim. What a dummy. Kinda like when Evil Kneivel wanted to jump the Grand Canyon. I've been to the bottom of it 4 times, very cool. Not sure about a rocket-cycle launching me over that crack though.
My weirdest survey was also in a prison. Medium security mens facility the firm I worked for didn't quite get the water draining in a couple spots. Can't have standing puddles in a prison ya know, especially by the basketball court
My I-man and me got assigned our guards to escort us all around. I had to remove the tip to my rod in the sally-port. It was all going good until the lunch alarm said "go back to barracks". That meant our escort guards got to go to lunch. Here we are, me on the rod with no point, my I-man shooting things. We had maybe 20 more minutes of work and were within a couple hundred feet of each other.
Talk about being spooked. Inside a prison, not a soul in sight. All the inmates are locked in their barracks playing ping pong & pool, and I've got to go shoot the building corners and get FF elevations. I'd rather work on an expressway
"....Dave (my I man), lets get the MF'ing heck out of here...NOW...". 20 minutes equals 10 minutes under due stress. No problems though, as our escort guards got us back through the sally-port and gave me my rod tip back, with tooth picks in their mouths.
As a young party chief doing a mortgage as-built, I knocked on the door of the house to let the occupants know what I was doing. A somewhat attractive woman opened the door, wearing absolutely nothing. I stood there like an idiot with my jaw down around my navel, stammering 'humma, humma, humma' or something to that effect and completely forgot what I was going to say. I stammered something about 'me surveyor' and tried to go to work but had a really hard time staying focused. I guess that kind of thing happens all the time to those virile surveyor types, but not me.
Does that count?
Fuzzy thinking is what happens when all the blood rushes from your head down into your.......................
Those are the days young men dream about.
Some days extra attention is expected to please the client.
:-O
Did you knock on the door again to let her know when you were finished..? Shame on you if you didn't let her know.
We were called by the daughter of the land owner to split off a tract for her son. Showed up and talked to the land owner, everything was ok. 15 minutes later he rides up and threatens to shoot us if we don't pack up and leave now, no one is splitting his farm up. We're scratching our heads, partner calling the daughter to tell her we're leaving. Old guy pulls up on his golf cart and waves us down. I roll down the window ready to get chewed out again when he asks us if we're there to split the tract off for his grandson, he wants to show us where and how he wants it. By now I've figured it out, go walking with him to throw some flags out while my partner is still trying to get ahold of his daughter. About the time I'm walking back to the truck she pulls in and ask us to wait until she can talk to her dad in his trailer. She come back and says he's got dementia and somedays are worse than others. They've got all his guns in the house down the road don't worry about him. At that time she asks us to survey the entire 120 acre farm because the neighbor wants to buy the farmable ground and she'll keep the rest. Great, what would have taken a half day just turned into 4 days. I had the same convesation with the old guy everyday, two or three times a day. He'd either be happy as all get out or ready to kill us at the flip of a switch. When we were setting the last pin he pulled up on his cart and as we talked he said he was sorry but his brain was going and he couldn't remeber too much and was sorry if he caused us any problems. Real nice guy in his right mind, hated to hear he'd died a few months later but it was for the best.
