Posted on 03/21/2011 5:20:37 AM PDT by reaganaut1
RENO, Nev. — Burly, bearded and beer-loving, Kris Strickland is not your average student-athlete. He doesn’t use a ball, a mitt, or a racket to show his skills.
He uses a four-pound hammer.
Mr. Strickland, a Virginia Tech senior, was just one of scores of competitors who took part in the weekend’s 33rd International Intercollegiate Mining Competition, an annual tourney that combines the passion of college sports with the grit of hard core — and hard rock — mining.
“It’s a rush,” said Mr. Strickland, 22, a mining and mineral engineering major whose specialty is handsteel, an event which involves driving a metal spike into a cube of concrete. “And it’s a lot more fun than sitting in a classroom.”
Equal parts history lesson and he-man contest, the competition involves eight events, each tied to a bygone era of prospecting. There’s the high-pressure action of gold-panning, a concentration-intense test that involves finding flattened BBs (standing in for gold) in a can of dirt. There’s the jackleg, where competitors use a six-foot-long hydraulic drill bit to see who can bore the deepest. And, of course, there’s the fearsome Swede saw, where whoever can saw through a six-by-six-inch timber the fastest — and the most accurately — is named the winner.
All of which, say organizers, is both exciting for students — an engineering-heavy group who come from as far as Australia to compete — and not as easy as it looks.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Or perhaps they could also have an excellent career in the adult film industry.
I worked for a jack-leg mining co. back in college. It was a blast, literally.
Likely the most physical labor they will ever do in their lifetime...
I find that people are generally lazy especially when it comes to physical labor.
Mining Engineering is the smallest of the engineering depts. at Tech; but, they’re very hard core if you’ll pardon the pun.
:D
Hoss
State/government growth is so strong, the theft of industries, wages, labor so much, that the parasitic Poli Sci majors have years of private wealth to feast upon.
Thinking of an episode in LHOTP where Mr Edwards and Mr Ingalls took time about with a sledge and a drilling rod
Guess what this is about
Holding that rod looked kinda dangerous if that guy with the 4 pounder missed
Kinda funny in this story where the girl says she thinks she swallowed a rock
TTIUWP
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