lucid in deutschland

Endlich. My music video with my MiniDV files is finished. YEAH! I'm so proud of it. I had to get a clue and clean the old Dell and use the iRiver as an extra hard drive to create the .avi file. It took 35 minutes to produce, and 15 minutes to compress. I love the Vegas Movie Studio and Virtual Dub. Now if I just had the time to compile the other old video clips..

Now every time we walk or drive by a construction site, I beam inside knowing I can operate the excavator. The day before my appointment though, I was filled with nervous thoughts. What if I miss understood the German instructor? too complicated? What if I break it? or worse flip the damn thing over with me inside? The only screw up I made that day was that I misread the driving directions and navigated us to the owner's house in Bad Tölz instead of the Kiesgrube. I had to annoy a village lady mowing her lawn for directions. We were almost late for my appointment!

As soon as we arrived at the gravel pit, the nerves melted away in my brain and I picked up the instructions quickly. Yet the nerves manifested themselves through jittery legs, sweaty palms and excessive lip licking. Still, I loved every minute of it. You can here the instructor in the beginning say Super! and I knew I would be alright. I started off on the smaller excavator for the first 30 minutes to get the feel and basically wait until the other person was finished. My task was to fill the hole the guy made before me. Kein Problem.

The last half hour, I got to use the 20 ton excavator. The right-hand controller at 3 and 9 o'clock swings the cabin and arm left and right. At 6 and 12 o'clock, it curls the shovel out and in. The left-hand controller moves the arm out and in at 3 and 9 o'clock and up and down at 6 and 12 o'clock. To pull the dirt into the shovel you have to use a smooth passing combination between left-hand back and right-hand back toward 7-8 o'clock. In the end, you can see in the video I filled the shovel with so much dirt and extended the arm so far that I tipped the Caterpillar about a foot off the ground. Whohoo! Awesome.

Sandor, the instructor, asked how much dirt did I think I was carrying in the shovel. I answered about a car's worth in weight. He estimated it was about 3 to 4 cars worth. Whoa, I was filling the shovel with 3-4 tons of dirt. Brown dirt.

So if you're in Bavaria and you get a wild hair to dig holes or fill them. Gives the ladies a call at www.Baggerpass.de Thanks, Love, for a wonderful time and once in a life time experience.