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Rocking The World Of History By Sir Guillaume de la Belgique Because of my experience with the SCA, I often find myself looking at the most mundane situations and searching for some sort of historical lesson. Sometimes this provides insight resulting in efficient problem solving and communication; more often it makes people wonder if I'm taking some kind of prescription medication. Recently I had occasion to stay in the home of Lady Laurana's parents after an out-of-town tournament, along with about a dozen other Calafians who had traveled to the event. Sunday morning, Laurana's father, who we'll call "Bill" (because that's his name), was making pancakes and trying to keep six hungry fighters, including a majority of the Calafian chivalry, from eating every carbon-based item in his kitchen. We had already devoured two loaves of bread, half a leftover pizza, a whole plate of fresh fruit, a dozen bagels, and a five-pound box of Cap'n Crunch with Crunchberry cereal which Sir Ryan specifically requested as his breakfast of choice and which Lord Patrick thought was extremely tasty when mixed into a bowl of granola. During the course of breakfast conversation, ("Please put the furniture down! I promise I'll make more pancakes.") Sir Attila mentioned that he had once been in the landscaping business - a fact which Bill hoped to use to his advantage. Soon after breakfast, Bill took Ryan and Attila outside to look at a huge rock beside the driveway which, Bill told them, he was thinking of moving to the back yard. The rock was about the size of your average side-by-side refrigerator, and, in Attila's estimation, weighed "way too much for us guys to move." Ryan, on the other hand, thought that several tough fighters could easily carry the gargantuan boulder to the back yard as a token of repayment for Bill's hospitality. After a few minutes of discussion, they were joined by myself, Sir Caius, and Patrick, and the six of us decided to give the rock a trial lift - against the advice of Attila, who I think suspected (correctly) that if we so much as laid a finger on the rock we were not going to stop until the job was done, no matter how many people perished in the process. Unfortunately, this half-ton behemoth of a rock cunningly thwarted all of our attempts to move it by pure knightly brute force. At this point, Bill, being a reasonable person, said, "This rock is a lot heavier than I thought. Let's just skip it." Until now, the whole rock-moving incident was pretty run-of-the-mill - something you'd see in hundreds of back yards on any given weekend all across the country. The difference is this: An average batch of guys would, at this point, have broken out a "sixer" of beer, turned on the Sunday Afternoon Football Pre-Morning Locker Room Warm-Up Show, and spent the rest of the day scratching their groinal regions; but we, with our unique historical perspective, weren't going to be outsmarted by a rock. Attila said: "How did the Egyptians move their stones when they built the pyramids?" Of course, he said this with a straight face, and he fully expected that someone in the crowd would have the answer. Ryan replied that the Egyptians had thousands of slaves to move their rocks, but since we only had one squire present, we quickly ruled that method out. We moved on to the "Man: User of Tools" phase of the project when someone remembered Archimedes' theory of leverage. Then, Bill, who was feeling a little uncertain about the whole idea but who didn't want to stand in the way of innovation, brought three long steel bars from his garage to use as levers. With a great amount of whooping and leaping about, we managed to lever the rock a distance of nearly two feet during the course of the next 15 minutes. Next we came to the "Wonders of the Ancient World" project phase. Sir Caius, delving deeply into his historical knowledge, said, "Let's do what the Celts did to build Stonehenge. Let's get some rollers and put them under the rock and we can move it easily." Attila replied, "The Celts were morons. Look at Stonehenge, they didn't know what they were doing. We need wheels! The Hungarians used wheels! Is there a cart around here?" "No," said Caius, "The Celts were great. I'm telling you the rollers will work ..." Suddenly, I realized these six grown men, who were engaged in a project that had begun as nothing more than the moving of a rock, had quickly turned the task into a debate about the technological developments of the medieval world and how these techniques could be put to use with common household items. Where else but in the SCA? We found a cart which we were fairly confident was strong enough to hold the rock and, using our levers (and the Persian idea of a "fulcrum" tossed in by Felinah just for good measure) we got the rock about half-way onto the cart. After 30 minutes of levering and pushing and grunting and sweating, we and our Hungarian wheels had moved the rock the better part of 10 yards, with Caius and Ryan, the whole time, trying to convince us how much easier the job would be if we used Celtic rollers instead. At that point, the cart proved that, in fact, it wasn't strong enough and dumped the rock into Bill's woodpile. "You see," said Caius, "the Hungarians knew nothing about moving rocks. They only knew how to make goulash. We need rollers." As we were trying to resurrect the cart, Ryan went off and found two short pieces of pipe to use as rollers; we jammed them under the rock, still dubious about this fabled piece of Celtic lore, and gave a shove. All of us, even Bill, were amazed as the huge boulder moved easily, even gracefully, forward. I felt like Luke Skywalker watching Yoda levitate the spaceship from the swamp using The Force, and I would have gone on feeling surprised even longer if, just at that moment, the rock hadn't crashed down off the rollers about two inches from my foot. Caius responded with his typical restraint and tact: "Wooooo! The Celts were geniuses! The Celts were gods! Celts! Celts! Celts! ..." (You can find the answer to the age-old question, "Which is smarter, the fighter or the rock?" in the conclusion of this story in Guillaume's book.) Read more in "We Are Not Amused, Sir Guillaume!"
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