golf balls and garden hoses

A note on the backyard contraption I mistook for a clothesline-- a low slung knob and tube relay to the garage whose wiring is  only partially ensconced in electrical tape.  "Code" these days is to bury a Romex line in a weather-proof conduit.  Threading 100' of burred conduit with 100' of pliable Romex is a non-trivial task.  After consulting the Oracle of Internets, we settled on this approach.

1.  Tie slightly more than 100' of kite string to slightly more than 100' of heavier duty nylon string.  On the other end of the kite string, tie a piece of paper towel.

2.  Use vacuum cleaner hose attachment to suck the lightweight kite string through and pull the heavier duty string with it (so long as some of it sticks out both ends of the conduit).

3.  Tie an end of the nylon string to the Romex line (taking care to make the knot as skinny and aerodynamic as possible).  

4.  At this juncture, we naively began pulling the Romex through and got about 10 feet before things got Tough...  fortunately, PaGyver stopped by with some helpful hints...

4a.  Lube the Romex with Vaseline (we had lots on hand from a failed fiberglass shower curtain prototype)

4b.  Position your conduit so that it is as straight as possible-- particularly the several feet in front of the nylon string + romex knot

4c.  Use leverage, where possible, i.e. when he has enough bite, the puller can loop the nylon over a treebranch, etc. to assume more comfortable/powerful pulling position