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Stories from Bernie's current trip - a mule voyage from Canada to Mexico

October 26, 2006
Symmetry has eluded me since age three when I strapped two pieces of wood together, one two-feet long, the other three, pushed them into a puddle and called the creation a boat. Okay, there are boats like that, with one hull longer than the other. They're called "proas" and, yes, they're extremely rare - confined to sheltered Pacific Ocean islands. Marshallese Pacific Proa (Courtesy Messing About in Boats Magazine) Unfortunately, these craft are prone to flipping in heavy seas. Seems Neptune, naval architects, the US Navy and everyday sailors prefer boats with same-length hulls. The same applies to mule teams. Given the choice, the wise teamster invariably selects two animals of similar weight, size, temperament and age. It's just human nature. You wouldn't build a sandwich with a top slice of white bread and a bottom of whole wheat would you? Take Jack and Bill for example, my last pair of mules. Both were big, brawny, plenty strong to pull my wagon, and a refreshing change from Woody, easy to catch. Jack and Bill (Southern Pines, NC - Christian Harberts photo) But ultimately, their size was against them. At 15.2 hands (62 inches) and 1300 pounds, they were just too big, heavy and above all, hungry for Great Plains travel. The wind-scoured country I plan to visit calls for smaller mules. Trouble is, it's just hard to find a small (by that I mean 800 pounds per animal) suitable team. Small teams, I'm learning, have a reputation for running away - often and vigorously. And the sane ones, well, no one in their right would part with them because they're so thrifty and handy. My buddy Tommy, with glasses as thick as a Brinks truck windshield, has a name for them. "Jack Rabbit" mules he calls them for their propensity to escape with most any conveyance still attached to them - wagon, plow, sled, it just doesn't seem to matter with these little critters. But small mules are hardy. Woody, at 800 pounds, gained weight in his 3,500 trek across America. Then again, he's thrown me three times this year, as recently as last week... See what I said about them being prickly? So big teams are out and small sane teams are out because I can't find them. That leaves mismatched teams - where one animal might be shorter or lighter than another - but where each animal is solid in its own right. There is precedent for this. Do you think that early pioneers waited around twirling their pitchforks until they had a matched team before they hooked up the plow and broke sod. No. They used whatever they could shoehorn into a collar and hames. So now I'm trying out smaller mules individually, hoping to build my own team. So far, this has produced amusing sight gags but no team. Take this team I drove recently. Little Bat Nuts and the Cannon Mule The one on the left wearing the "Woe is me" look under his blinders is actually a World Champion chariot racing mule (for teams with a combined weight under 1500 lb). He's fast, real fast, having escaped us for half an hour before we got the harness strapped on. Then he dragged the sled he was attached to around the pasture at full steam for half an hour.... The one on the right with the "Aw no, you didn't hook me up to little bat nuts." look on her face is a twenty-year old mule so quiet her owner has dragged a Civil War style cannon behind her - and fired it off. The view from behind Now let's look at that team from behind. Makes you want to drop your right shoulder to compensate with a sympathy slouch doesn't it? But technically, this hitch works. At the bottom of the picture, you see three metal bars, one attached to the sled and the other two to the mules. The two smaller ones attached to the mules (the little mule's is hidden) are called trees. The mules are attached to them by chains called traces. That's how they pull the sled. The middle bar is also a tree. By offseting the middle tree, sometimes called an evener, closer to the smaller mule, it gives him more leverage so the pulls of both animals can be equalized. Okay, so this isn't a matched team. But just like that mismatched plank boat launched my sailing career, I'm hoping that by just getting two mules in the harness, pulling my wagon, I'll be able to jiggle things enough to come up with a matched, sort of, team. If that doesn't work, I'm considering hitching a mule and a steer. Just kidding. It has been done, though. Maybe next time we'll talk about mixed species teams... Posted Thursday October 26, 2006 by Bernie
October 9, 2006

Flash back to January 2006.

I’d built the Lost Sea Wagon body, my inteneded vehicle for the 2000 mile journey up the Great Plains, and was mounting it on the wagon chassis.

I should have worried when my buddy Alex and I couldn’t hoist the 6 by 12 foot body onto the wagon chassis, relying instead on Mel Wyatt’s Kubota tractor for hoisting power. I blamed the cold. Surely, this thing would weigh less when summer came.


Take 1: Alex (0n tractor) trys not to crush Bernie
(fool with the hat, and fingers, under wagon).
January 2006
Southern Pines, NC


Winter voyage with the first wagon
Southern Pines, NC

Then summer came and I worked up the courage to weigh my creation.
The truck scales bottomed out at 2360 pounds. That was with the wagon empty.
So much for the theory that hot air would make my behomoth lighter.
So I built a new wagon.

This time I built it one third as large and heavy – in two months. This weekend, I mounted the wagon body onto the chassis.


Take 2: Alex wonders how he can get Bernie to do the heavy lifting

Now I’m not a macho guy in the Sit-on-my-Back-While-I-do-Push-ups sense, prefering, rather, to let levers, car jacks and friends do my heavy lifting. Still, I had to wonder.

Just how much did this new body weigh?

Driving it to the land fill scale was out. So was weighing it on bathrooms scales. Ever since my jockey days, when the red dial on the bathroom floor dictated every bite I took, I’ve refused to own a pair. You just know when you weigh too much, don’t you? Same with a wagon I figured.

So in classic Cave Man style, I grabbed the front of the wagon (the front porch?), hoisted it into the air and shouted for Alex to hurry up and take a photo. It still wasn’t THAT light, but it had shed hundreds of pounds.



Then Alex rolled the chassis under the new body and it was time for some gloating.


Thanks for the help, Alex. And no, Mel, I won’t need the Kubota this time.

Now I just have to find a mule team. Did I mention the chariot racing mule I’m eyeing?

Posted Monday October 9, 2006 by Bernie