pulling wire in the wind

Today I learned about wire-pulling lubricants. The ones I read about online all said they're water based and non-toxic, and the one we found at the store didn't smell like much until I washed it off my gloves, and then it smelled kind of like WD-40, but only for a couple seconds. So, wire snot isn't my favorite product, but it did fine.

Because the other thing I learned is that pulling irrigation-valve controller wire through your old leaky irrigation hose under roughly 15 yards of sidewalk is not that easy. The trick to that is to accidentally choose to pull the wire toward the driveway, and when you can't possibly pull it through by hand anymore, you can go borrow a come-along and attach it to your car.