At this point, this definitely isn't dull - although I'm probably dull since I keep digging... What I thought was the bottom slab of my supposed antique poor man's cooler sounds hollow and has stone sides that extend below it.
This is a follow-up on this post. I kept digging because I wondered why the brickwork extended so far down for no obvious reason.
Today was a warm day, and the now-exposed frozen ground had thawed enough that I could finally dislodge the rest of the bricks. I found a whole lot more bricks, and some properly ancient wood shoring slats - black and almost completely decomposed, unlike the slats I found above them on Sunday. Half of the bricks and the black wood slats were completely surrounded by thick tree roots, so they've been in the ground at least long enough for that former birch tree to grow 6 inches in diameter.
This is what I dug out today:
I think I got all the bricks out - either whole or as shards I dug out of the tree roots. And so I tried to lift the slab, and... I couldn't because there are solid walls all around below it. This is the top of a stone box. And it sounds hollow when I hit it with a steel bar.
At this point, I'm well below the level of the lake. The water starts pooling at the bottom of the hole when I dig around the box:
I'd say whatever hollow space exists under the slab is probably no more then 4 or 5" above the lake water, which is probably what I'll find when I lift it. Like I said in the other post, the lake used to be lower. But now whatever this mystery space is has probably been underwater for at least 15 years.
I'm gonna have to call a friend or two to deal with this further: whatever is there isn't budging, and I can't dig this far down: I have a disability and I don't have enough balance to stand down there and dig this low down.
So, stay tuned to find out what's hiding in the mystery stone box 🙂
When I first developed a back injury, I expressed to my eldest brother that I was worried my kid would need me and that I would be unable to get to them due to pain.
He subsequently told me about a time shortly after the story I told above in which the rock I mentioned fell on his foot during an attempt at removal.
According to him, my dad was able to lift the rock - which, again, power equipment had previously been unable to move significantly - long enough for my brother to escape.
Apparently adrenaline is a powerful thing. Hopefully that contributes to your enjoyment of the day!
Sadly much less dull, but it had a good beat and you could dance to it, so - Approved. *thump*
Thank you for the validation! I've no more stories about the rock, which I hope is the dullest anecdote of them all.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hysterical_strength
We normally only use a fraction of our full muscle strength. It's like a subconscious limit to prevent you from tearing your muscles and ligaments. Adrenaline completely overrides that limit.
Well, I'm tired, bored, and this is one of those subjects that rarely gets expanded on, so I'm jumping in
Us using only a fraction of our potential strength is a thing. And, indeed, adrenaline can override those limits, up to a point. It isn't a complete override, nor would a complete override tear things up to the degree that the shorter version of this information makes it seem.
See, a big chunk of the limitation we have in using our strength comes down to biomechanics. If a given muscle could move 100 pounds in isolation when lined up perfectly, a big reason the same muscle on the body can't move the same weight is that each muscle has to work with the connection points to bones, around joints. So there's not really a way to use 100% of the potential.
But there is still a limiter beyond that! It's called the golgi reflex organ. It's basically some nerves that live where tendons and muscles join up. It's entire purpose is to detect how much tension is on that junction, and kick in a limitation when the tension goes too high.
That limitation isn't so much about tearing things up, though that is a factor. It's about keeping the body stable and effective. It's potayto potahto for the most part, but the underlying function isn't to keep us dumb monkeys from ripping ourselves up, it's the other factors and the injury reduction is a side benefit.
That's mostly because a typical person can't tear themselves up very much. That kind of injury you see with the batshit crazy weight lifters having their muscles totally pull off the bone isn't going to happen to someone average even with adrenaline. What you'd get is strains, pulled muscles and the like. Painful, annoying, and definitely not anything to sneeze at, but no different in scale than what you'd get without adrenaline by pushing too hard or experiencing atypical situations.
We also have energy limits. You can only fire off so much muscle at once because there's not enough go juice to make it happen.
Which all comes back to is only using a fraction of our full strength being less about injury and more about it being wasteful. Doesn't take all our strength to pick up an empty box, and it might if the box was full of lead. So our brains and those golgi organs conspire to not go hard unless there's a reason to. There's just an override for emergencies that gets us much closer to balls out than normal.