People, do not even fight me on how awesome this is. I can’t wait to inflict this knowledge on someone.
And “borrow pit”? What a great name.
Engineers. They try to play all “Oh, I’m all science-y. Look at my math. Look at my calculator. Look at my logic. I’m practically a scientist.”
But every once in a while, you catch a glimpse of the poet in their souls.
Thanks for the link. That is fascinating.
In one of the Little House on the Prairie books, Laura’s father works supervising railroad construction. He takes her out one day to see the crews of men and horses, scraping soil off the high spots, dumping it into wagons and moving it to the low ones to make the railbed level. They move in long figure-8′s to accomplish this — the ancestor of your “borrow-pits”. Sorry I can’t find the exact text for you…
Lynn
It’s neat to learn the term for these, after all these years. Thank you.
Don’t thank me, y’all. Go heap the love on W.
I totally thought that was a little throwaway post about something only interesting to me. But it’s been really popular and got more hits than just about every other post combined. Some bicycle blog in Seattle even picked it up (but labeled it FOR NERDS ONLY in all caps).
I’m going to have to put off the follow up post on the opposite of the borrow pit. It isn’t quite so cool…..
I hope the opposite of the borrow pit is the gather hill.