Despair

The additional dirt had helped me get the vision, but turning it to reality was still a stumper. I had a lot of ideas, but they all seemed too expensive, structually unsound, or un-hobbit-like (not round). The more my wife and I puzzled over it, the more we came to the conclusion that we needed a big section of pipe. Yep, that would to it. It would be structurally sound, waterproof, and, most importantly, round. But would it be inexpensive?

We priced pipes, and quickly gave up on that. Pipes 6 feet in diameter and 15 feet long cost around 2 grand--1500 if we skimped on the length. Ouch! So the next thing to try was a 2nd hand pipe. Perhaps there was a wrecking yard, or a construction company had some used pipe they would be willing to sell as scrap.

You know how, when you are looking to buy a house, and you find your head turning every time you see a for sale sign? Even if the house is a dump, you always look. You start being able to see for sale signs in back of your head. My wife and I started to be like that with culvert pipes--metal or concrete. We would see some in a yard, or on the side of the road, and we would wonder whether they were wanted. I stopped at a few places, and they either wanted too much, or else they weren't selling. My wife was so desparate for a pipe that once she had me go on Google Earth to try to find one she had seen somewhere along Highway 6 in Price Canyon. First we had to find it, then find out who owned it, and figure out how in the heck we were going to get it home. Lucky for me, we couldn't spot it in the satellite photos.

Despair was beginning to set in for my wife. It seemed her dream would never come true, all for lack of a pipe we could afford to buy and cart home. I was less desparate, even a bit ambivalent. If it didn't work out, at least that was one less job I needed to tackle. It was a cool idea, while it lasted.

But my wife would not give up...