Here are the three posts that we erected this weekend, from which we've since suspended two Sun Sails:


                 


We got these up this weekend, and let the concrete cure before putting up the sunsails yesterday.

However, yesterday morning, I was out running on Cavalry Road, and I saw a road sign that had been knocked over by the wind; the sign had a big plug of concrete at its base, which had been pulled right out of the ground by 40 mph winds. A local, sitting there on his truck, said "Yeah, the county never puts 'em deeper than they have to..."

I realized that my sunsail posts were not much deeper set than that road sign. Somewhere along the lines I read "put one-third of a post underground" but, of course, that didn't seem to me to make sense when the posts themselves were twelve feet tall. But after seeing that road sign get ripped out of the ground, I've reconsidered the situation.

Now, if an east wind catches those sun sails and blows the posts over to the west, that would be embarrassing. It might even cause the sun sails to blow away forever - or at least to California.

But a west wind that would blow the posts into the stucco on the side of my house would cause damage that would be expensive to repair - and would cause Ethel to make those noises that she makes; those squirmy noises that are so uncomfortable to listen to. She never makes those noises in a situational vacuum - they always follow close on the heels of any great mistake on my part. So, given the possible monetary and structural damage, and the likely marital discomfort, that would result from these posts not taking the wind load, I made an Executive Decision to have Silas take the sun sails down, and then to bust up the concrete with the jackhammer and take the posts down as well.

(As long as the posts are up, I'll keep thinking "gee, maybe they would work, after all" - so I want them DOWN, to remove the temptation).

So now I need to determine if there is a way to do this that can't hurt the house; it may require posts that are 18 feet long - and, with 6 feet of that underground, that might just be too much work. Trying to dig a six-foot hole in calichi scares me, it does. And perhaps wooden timbers that long might not be strong enough to handle the stresses, and might BREAK - that would be double-plus ungood, as well - which means that I'd need to use metal posts, and those would be shiny and difficult to paint.

Maybe the whole idea will have to be abandoned.

Once upon a time, I don't know that I would have been able to simply abandon such an idea; having bought the parts, I would have been forced by my own impatience to assemble the whole, and just "expect" it to be okay. But I've been hurt enough by my own mistakes over the last few decades to realize that sometimes the best thing that I can do is cut my losses and say "Gee, I don't think that that will work."

I've learned that my fears are always in a hurry, while the "still, small voice" is always patient; the ego is always insistent and never consistent, while He is always consistent and never insistent. Last night, around 3 AM, it seemed to be the still, small voice saying to me "hey, that might not have been a good idea".

Great definition I read this morning: " A conscience is the still, small voice that makes you feel still smaller" : )