Big G, Coffee Machine and Goblin

Chapter 41 Excavator Driving Techniques

To ensure the boiled vegetables wouldn't spoil, Ma Li drove day and night, returning to the city in just a day and a half.

The moment he saw the highway, he completely relaxed.

Luoyang was almost unchanged since he left. The roadsides were lined with parked cars, and the doors of the shopping malls and office buildings were wide open, but there was not a single person in sight.

Ma Li first went to Red Star Macalline and got two freezers, then took them to the auto repair shop, plugged them in, and threw all the boiled vegetables inside.

Then I went to the supermarket next door and bought a few bottles of mineral water. After leaving the supermarket, I turned right and came to the curb, where there was a bathtub and a snack stall.

This is his makeshift bathhouse.

Actually, Ma Li was taking a shower at home earlier, but after the power went out, the water pumps at the waterworks couldn't work, and the water supply to the city was cut off.

He relied entirely on bottled water from the supermarket for his daily needs, but carrying it up the stairs was a hassle, so he eventually just relieved himself on the curb, since there was no one else in the city anyway.

The bathtub was also brought back from the furniture store by him, while the original owners of the snack stall were a young couple from Northeast China who sold sweet and sour pork nearby.

Their tricycles not only carried pots and gas stoves, but also a large tank of liquefied gas.

Ma Li boiled the mineral water on the stove, poured it into the bathtub, added cold water to adjust it to a suitable temperature, then took off his clothes and jumped in.

He had this habit from his previous job: if he worked late or was away on a business trip, he would take a hot bath as soon as he got back to his place.

In this way, the fatigue in your body is evaporated by the hot steam, and every pore on your body relaxes.

Ma Li even prepared a bottle of iced cola, which he brewed and drank to double his happiness.

After taking a bath, he changed into clean clothes and went straight to bed.

He slept for a full twelve hours. After waking up, he didn't rush to work, but instead played Baldur's Gate 3 for two more days.

Kudos to Larian for not forcing an internet connection to play the game.

After resting both mentally and physically, Ma Li rode his bicycle to the city library on the morning of the third day.

He grew up in an auto repair shop and has a certain foundation in electrical, mechanical, and vehicle engineering. His hands-on skills are stronger than the average person, but civil engineering is a completely unfamiliar field for him.

He found a few reference books related to road engineering on the bookshelf, sat down at the long table in the library, turned on his camping lamp, and began reading, while also finishing his breakfast.

This would certainly not have been allowed in the past, but nowadays no one will stop him.

Ma Li watched until noon and realized that he had underestimated the importance of road repairs.

Especially considering that he is now all alone, it would probably take decades to build a reliable road leading out of the red mist.

Taking the most common asphalt road as an example, the design stage alone can be a major hurdle. It requires first conducting research and route selection, combining geology and hydrology to determine the route alignment; then conducting cross-sectional and longitudinal design; followed by structural design (specifically, the turning route and the climbing height); and finally, optimization and adjustments.

Once construction begins, the workload will be even greater.

Modern highways have multi-layered pavement structures that require different materials, and collecting and transporting these materials to the construction site takes a lot of time.

Furthermore, one must be proficient in using various types of machinery, which requires a significant amount of learning and trial-and-error. However, this does not mean that the road construction plan cannot proceed.

After reading these professional books, Ma Li reflected on his own needs and realized that he didn't actually need a very "reliable" path.

Thanks to the unique conditions within the red fog, there are no plants, no rain, and not even wind.

This means that he doesn't need to consider issues such as drainage and wind erosion, and the roads he builds are only for his own passage without other traffic participants, so there are no high requirements for strength and stability.

In addition, the riverbed of Black Rock Canyon is actually a natural gravel layer. The closely packed small stones have excellent load-bearing capacity and can be used as a high-quality natural roadbed.

What he actually had to do was find a way to remove the large rocks blocking the way, and if there were loose cobblestone layers, he could dig them up and backfill and compact them with gravel.

When we have time later, we can lay a layer of cement or asphalt on top as a surface layer. If we don't have time, we can just leave it as is.

This reduces the workload significantly and requires less machinery.

Ma Li did a rough calculation and found that in the early stages, he only needed to learn how to operate excavators, dump trucks, bulldozers, and road rollers, which greatly reduced the workload.

Moreover, these things are readily available in the city. Ma Li remembered passing by a construction site on his way to the hospital, where excavators were working hard inside.

After lunch, he went there and drove it out.

There aren't many buttons and handles on an excavator, and even without an instruction manual, you can figure out their functions by trying them a couple of times.

Ma Li mastered the basic operation in less than 15 minutes, but it would be difficult to become an expert.

In fact, he spent almost half an hour figuring out the passageway ditch. Fortunately, the library also had books that introduced excavator operation. For the next week, Ma Li spent most of his time with the excavator.

Besides the excavator equipped with a bucket, Ma Li later found another excavator with a hydraulic breaker at a construction site in the city. He drove both excavators into the canyon.

If you encounter a large rock that you can't dig open, first use a rock breaker to break it up, and then use a bucket to move the broken rock to the side of the road.

After a week, his excavator driving skills improved by leaps and bounds. If this were a game, a skill upgrade notification would have popped up above his head.

In comparison, dump trucks are much easier to drive.

There are many sand quarries along the Luo River. Ma Li found one that was relatively close by and transported sand from there to the construction site.

The sand is unloaded, then bulldozed and leveled, and finally compacted with a road roller.

The operating procedures for these vehicles are relatively simple and easy to learn. After a few tries, they can generally operate normally.

His daily paving progress increased from just a few dozen meters at the beginning to several hundred meters. Of course, this mainly depends on the difficulty of the project. It is normal to be stuck for two or three days when encountering tricky sections.

In fact, as long as it's a road section that a dump truck can pass through, Mali tends to leave it alone for now and deal with it later when he has time.

Besides road construction, he also kept up with his studies. The courses he had recorded on his phone came in handy. He could listen to them while working on the excavation, and he would also flip through those literacy picture books when he had free time to rest.

In short, Ma Li had a very fulfilling two months. As the roads were being built further and further away, he decided to drive a motorhome to save time and live and eat in the motorhome, so he wouldn't waste time commuting.

(End of this chapter)