And the top has arrived!

I'm riding home from work today (it's 7 PM; it's that late because I was in Winkler for our first league: we lost 4-2, but it was a very respectable showing) and I meet Margruite walking down the road. She's going for an evening walk, I think, isn't that nice. Isn't that so pleasantly rural. But as I pull up she says that Todd's bringing the table top in a few minutes and she's going to Ray and Marilyn's to ask Ray to bring the tractor (with a front-end loader) to lift the top (it's about 1500 lbs!) off of Todd's truck. I'm dubious. I'm surprised. I'd actually been thinking, as I was riding into the wind, that this would be the perfect night for this to happen, because I wouldn't be ready for it ... at all. And here it was happening, because just as she says this I turn around to see Todd driving down the road toward our place, with the top in the truck-bed. Well holeee! So Margruite keeps walking to Ray's for the tractor, even though I say I'm not sure that the old John Deere will be able to lift it. I tell her to tell Ray not to put the bucket on the front end; no point in adding weight to it, I say. So we scramble. Ray comes by. Margruite and I get some bales from the loft of the chicken coop (to cushion the descent of the top, should the tractor not be able to let it down slowly) and Todd and Ray hook up the front-end loader to the nylon straps looped around the stone. And then we tried it. And the old John Deere lifted it, and Todd drove the pick-up out from underneath it, and we put down the blocking and the bales underneath the slab to keep it up off of the ground and to facilitate lifting up for the next step in the process of getting the table together and in place.

So here it sits now, out on the front yard, cushioned by two hay bales, awaiting a backhoe with a long enough boom to lift it and move it through the front door into the house. That'll be the next step, but not the last one. Pretty amazing piece of granite though, eh?