Dan gets his head stuffed through a rubber gasket

The show started off wth Ian stepping confidently out onto the sheet of puddled plastic on the ground before us. Before he could blink an eye his feet shot away from beneath him and set him right down in a puddle. I gave a pretty good laugh. Brothers are there to laugh first and then check welfare second. We also get to say we knew better when we go second even though we know we would have done the exact same thing if we had gone first. So, I walked out gingerly onto the plastic and told myself I knew better than to stomp around on wet plastic.

The plastic covered a recently re-worked spring which supplies my Aunt's house with water. The project left a non-functioning water system and our goal out here was to fix it. Our plan involved thrusting someone's arm into the icy cistern in the center of the spring area, a highly undesirable task on a day when there is snow sticking to the ground. Being fairly creative, and averse to freezing water, I hatched the plan to use Hannah's dry top: a waterproof jacket with neck and wrist gaskets intended to keep one dry when paddling kayaks and other boats on white water rivers.

At the spring, out on the plastic covering, I drew out the dry top. Considering that the jacket was meant for my wife, who is smaller than either of us we decided that I would wear it since I was smaller. As an aside, this is a disputable fact which I believe to be untrue; being the older, and he believes to be true; being the younger and therefore desiring to be the larger.

Either way, we had a jolly time pulling it over my head. First it pulled my hair, then it bunched up under my armpits so I couldn't pull it down and I believed myself to be suffocating. Ian pushed on my head and hauled on the other end of the jacket and then I popped through.

Things worked out great after that, I didn't get my arm wet at all, just my hand after an unfortunate scenario with a nitrile glove. We unfortunately didn't help the water situation much by all of this, I just got a good story out of it. The best part of it is that Ian later went back and stuffed himself, twice, into the dry top to play around in the water some more.

The happy ending to the story is that the issue was resolved several days later after a good amount of digging and exciting times with water spouts. Or so I hear. At least the water runs and I can say that I am grateful for that dry top, which is a strange thing to have at all. With Thanksgiving just around the corner it's good to think of things to be thankful for, especially the more unusual things. Such as my brother.

Happy Thanksgiving,

Dan