It has been in the news, but if anyone didn’t hear, last Septmber, a young man driving between Fargo and rural Minnesota had some car trouble. His Honda Pilot took on a mind of its own, speeding up to 113 mph, not letting him brake, and not allowing him to shut he car off. He was able to phone 911 as well as his mother while driving, and the Highway Patrol and county sheriff figured out how to stop him. A Deputy sped past him going 130 mph, stopped the patrol car in front of the Pilot, and instructed the young man to crash into the rear of the patrol car. He did, the vehicle stopped, and no one was injured.
The whole story is amazing, but what astounds me is that the driver was using his phone all through the ordeal. My phone is in my purse when I drive and is on silent so I can’t hear it or be tempted to answer it. My son has his phone set up so that it sends him calls and allows him to call while driving without taking his hands off the wheel. I imagine that is what the driver of the Pilot did, too. I don’t know if I would have had the presence of mind make the calls and drive and flip all the switches to try to turn the car off.
What would you have done? Is your phone connected to your car audio system? What is the fastest you have driven?
We talked about the first false fall the other day. And now the box elder bugs have arrived.
Egg production is down.
Last year’s chicks are finally aging out. The header photo is monthly dozens. This year’s chicks have started laying practice eggs. Takes three small ones to equal two regular eggs.
I heard about this on MPR. Made me think about Bart from the Morning Show. We know his cell phone is dead by now. Heck, it probably wouldn’t even work on the networks anymore. Trust us Bart, we’re not fat-shaming. We know you’re stocking up for winter.
I’ve seen a lot of farmers out combining soybeans. The big farmers are worried about that forecast of an early snow, so everyone will be pushing hard. Me? I just wait for the neighbors who harvest mine to get too it. But I’ll be hoping they’re pushing hard to get theirs done so they can get to mine. It will be what it will be.
Last week I pulled out a fence post in preparation for some stump grinding and I cleared some brush. In the process of clearing said brush, I somehow knocked a front tire off the rim. I think I hit a log or stick and broke off the valve stem. Had Appel Service out on Monday to repair that. Just needed a new valve stem.
Even though it’s tech week at the Rep, I’ve gotten a little work done at home. To prepare for the shop heater I am having installed, I met the LP gas dealer, and we discussed where to put the LP tank. (I just had to google ‘LP vs Propane’ because this is all new to me and I learned they’re the same thing with different names. Since we live out in the country and don’t have natural gas piping in the area, and we have all electric heat in the house, I’ve never dealt with an LP tank. I guess in our old house we used fuel oil.) Depending on size, an LP tank has to be 10 feet from structures. It can be right next to the gas or diesel barrels, but 10’ from a building. We decided to put it behind the shed. Out of sight that way. I scraped off some dirt and made a level spot. They will bury the line from the tank to the building, then it can run along the edge of the steel siding. Easier than trenching across the driveway. And as long as I remember to fill it before there’s two feet of snow back there, it will be fine.
Then I used the tractor loader and finally got the brush mower on a trailer and hauled it to a welding shop so they can fix it. Hard to explain, but the four large bolts holding one of the gear boxes came loose. It vibrated and rattled so bad it enlarged the bolt holes, and the vibrations led to multiple cracks. Repairing it was more than I could handle. Last weekend I used the forks on the loader and pulled it out of the weeds and tipped it up so I could take off the blades and related parts in preparation of the repair.
Using my extensive knowledge of picking things up, I managed to lift it up, work on it and then, again with my extensive knowledge, inadvertently tip it over backwards – on to the trailer wheel well. Huh. Oops.
From there I was able to tip it back up and get it back on its bottom. The only real damage was to the hydraulic hose which I’ll have to replace. And then from there, yet again using my extensive knowledge of redneck farming practices, I picked it up and got it on the trailer.
Luna got a ride in the truck ALL BY HERSELF that day being as the other two dogs still have a faint skunk aroma too them.
I was able to get a little work done in my shed. Started framing in the double door.
Friday, Olson’s Tree Service was out to grind out those stumps that was clearing last weekend. Glad to have that done. I can check it off the list now.
We could use a little rain. The winter rye is off to a good start but doesn’t seem to be growing too fast. Rain would really help.
There’s a new bakery that opened on my route between dropping off daughter and me going to work. They have a Mexican version of rosetta’s called ‘Bunuelos De Viento’. Oh my are they good.
So, a little bit of a lot going on this past week.
Anyone grow up with frost on their bedroom ceiling nails? What are you stocking up for winter?
There’s so much stuff going on, I don’t have time to get to the other stuff.
One day I met a friend in the grocery store, and he was carrying a bag of coleslaw mix. I’ve always liked coleslaw but never made my own. The friend told me how easy it is to make coleslaw and I started making my own and it is enjoyable and quite tasty. Last week I bought a fresh cabbage, and carrots, and this batch is even better than ever. Summertime goodness.
I took the generator off Kelly’s tractor, the C, and the alternator off the swather and took both of those to a local small business to be repaired. Once I get them back and reinstalled, I’ll be able to check them both off my To-Do list and hopefully both those things will stay charged and ready to start.
I feel like I spent so much time doing other “stuff”, I don’t get much crossed off my list.
Last week, coming back from Chatfield, my truck seemed to be making a thumping noise. I was trying to decide if it was the road, but no, got off the highway and it was still there. Then I was going through the dash gauges trying to find the tire pressures and there was a BANG and the tread came off a rear wheel. Bent both sides of the wheel well and ripped off a mud flap.
But the tire wasn’t flat, so I slowly drove the 10 miles home, took both rear wheels off, and took them to my tire place, Appel Service, in Millville. It was Monday so all the bars and restaurants were closed, but one place let me buy a bottle of pop. I walked around town and sat on a bench and enjoyed the weather while they put on new tires. Glad this happened close to home and not on the way to Minneapolis or something.
The coyotes have been back in the early mornings. One bark from Bailey, and Luna, sleeping in our bed, goes bezerk. That sure wakes us out of a sound sleep. And I stood outside trying to figure out what they’re barking at. And then I saw …‘something’…100 yards away down on the swamp road. And then it turned, and it was a coyote. Back in the house for the rifle and of course it was gone by then. I don’t think it got any breakfast that day. I fired one shot, just to warn it, and it hasn’t come back for a few days.
We got the barn painted. Here’s a before and after photo:
It looks real nice and I didn’t have to be involved. Well, except to write a check.
A former college student got married on the Rep Theater stage last week. It was really nice.
Cutting grass one night and the mower started running rough. That just about sucked all the wind out of me. “Can’t things just work??” And the next day I cleaned the spark plug, air filter, filled it with gas and thank goodness the lawn mower fairies must have been in because it worked fine. Then the belt came off the deck. Sigh.
The next day I went to John Deere and got both a new deck belt and a new drive belt and we’re back to cutting grass again. Until the next thing happens.
Classes start Monday at the college. I have one online class this fall, “Interpersonal communication”. I know the instructor and I asked him how communication could be online? He said this is about learning the “theory” of communication. He said I can still be a jerk if I want to be after class, but at least I would know HOW to communicate.
Watching the DNC convention and they had a huge balloon drop on the last night. Back in my stagehand days, I was part of an event that included a balloon drop. I remember whomever was in charge showing us what rope to pull. They were very specific about giving us a signal when it was time. Myself and another guy up in the catwalks waiting. We can’t find our guy, no one on the intercom, no idea what we’re supposed to be doing. But they’ve hit the climatic high point and it seems like this would be a good time, but again, they were very specific about telling us when. And yet there’s no sign of our guy. But once everyone started staring at the ceiling, we decided now’s the time and we released the balloons. You really do need a LOT of balloons to make it look like something. That group didn’t have that many.
I’m adding some 10’ tall, 6×6 posts next to some rotted posts in the pole barn.
Too many years of manure have rotted out the bases. The shed was built maybe in the 1970’s?
Dig a hole and bolt the new post to the old post. It takes 6 trips with the gator to get all the tools and bolts and drills, and back for a step ladder and sledgehammer, and another trip for the tractor and some gravel, and then another trip because a 5/8” bolt doesn’t fit in a ½” hole.
So it goes.
Mom used to say, “What your brain forgets your feet will remember”.
I’ve got three posts to fix and then I can check that off the list and move on to something else.
When YA was four, my folks sold their house and moved into a condo, a small condo which necessitated some serious downsizing. Quite a few items went into storage in my aunt’s basement but there were other items that my folks wanted my sister and me to take. One was a lovely china hutch that had always been earmarked for me and a nice side table that my mom thought would look good with the hutch.
Since I’ve always been a small-car person, driving down to get the furniture was out of the question. Renting a truck to drive all the way down and back didn’t seem too appealing either. We decided to take the train to St. Louis and drive the rental truck back. It was a fun trip. We took an atlas and a big batch of stickers which we affixed at every town we sailed through. YA spent a good couple of hours playing with two other little girls and their large collection of Barbie dolls.
Driving the truck back wasn’t too bad although it wasn’t a good truck for sightseeing as it was not easy to park due to it’s size. A couple of times we ended up parking in a lot that was quite a distance from where we wanted to go (especially in Hannibal). Eventually we got home in one piece, unloaded the furniture and returned the truck with not too much fuss.
I hadn’t thought about this trip for a while until yesterday at the post office. Now that my post office has re-installed the drive-through, I find myself there a couple of times a week. Yesterday as I was coming down the street, I saw a HUGE RV kind of thing trying to make the tight turn into the little parking lot. The woman driving had to scuutch it back and forth quite a bit, only getting 2 or 3 feet each time. Eventually she got straight but had to get out of the vehicle to put her letters in the mail box because the door was too high for the slot. It would have been much faster to double-park on the street and jump out quickly to mail her envelopes. It reminded me so much of The Intimida and I hoped she didn’t have too many more errands to run driving that beast.
Tell me about a time you drove a vehicle much larger than you were used to!
Yesterday morning I drove my next-door neighbors to the airport for a spring break trip to California. When we were about half way to the airport, the youngest daughter (she’s five) wailed that she hadn’t downloaded any music to her pad. The older daughter started to chime in as well. Dad quickly let them know that he had downloaded good playlists to their pads.
I wouldn’t even have known what most of the previous paragraph meant when I was the girls’ ages. Both their Mom and Dad are music teachers, so I suppose it’s not too surprising that everybody has to have a playlist for a 4-hour flight. When they get back, maybe I’ll ask the girls about what Dad had downloaded for them.
I like music but I can’t call myself an aficionada – I rarely know the names of songs and even if I recognize the music, I’m usually stumped about the composer. Or the band. So while I know that my phone could play music if I wanted, I don’t have anything set up and I don’t have any ear buds or headphones. When I’m on the plane, it’s either sleeping or reading for me. In fact, I almost always take too much reading material on the plane – except for the one time I had a big hard cover from the library in my carry on bag (All the Light You Cannot See) and I plowed through the entire book in between London and Minneapolis! Luckily by the time I finished the book, we were just about to land so I wasn’t tortured by too much “non-reading” time.
How do you keep yourself entertained when you fly/drive/train/covered wagon?
I’m guessing that I care more about mailboxes than your average Joe. I’ve done the math and on average, I send out a card every day. Most days when I send something, I just leave it at my mailbox for the mail carrier to take. But quite often, if I have three or more cards to send in one day, I like to drop them at the post office. Seems safer and easier on the mail carrier.
Drive-up mailboxes are my preference, since it’s meant to be a quick errand (usually in the midst of a list of errands) and that means Richfield or Nicollet. But I’m fussy (I know, you’re shocked, right?) The Nicollet box is curbside but on the right side of the street, so I have to get out of the car to put the envelopes in. That leaves Richfield as my drop-off point of choice.
To my shock and horror, early last spring, they removed the three drive up boxes! There was a note on the post office door explaining that they were taken out due to the road repair that was taking place. The note did ensure that the boxes would be replaced when the roads were finished. Considering all the problems in the world, this wasn’t the biggest deal, but it was a pain in my patoot. The road near the post office seemed finished up to me in early fall but the mailboxes didn’t come back AND the note about the boxes was gone as well.
I’d pretty much resigned myself to always having to get out of the car to put something in the mailbox until two weeks ago, when I turned the corner into the Richfield lot… AND THERE THEY WERE… all three of them in the same spot they were before. You would have thought I’d won the lottery – it made my day!
YA and I don’t do much fast food but we do like Taco Bell. I’m probably in the drive-through at the Edina location every couple of weeks.
Two weeks ago our fridge was filled with ingredients for party food so I stopped by Taco Bell on the way home for lunch. We almost always get the same thing so it wasn’t a very eventful stop until I came around the back of the building. Right in front of me was a Papa John’s delivery car, complete with the sign on top.
I thought it was pretty funny and understandable. Even if you get all the pizza you want to eat for free when you work at Papa John’s, every now and then you probably need something else to tease your tastebuds.
Hopefully his management thinks it’s funny too and not poor advertising!
When YA was first driving, I asked a good friend of mine, who had two daughters older than YA, “when will I be able to get in a car with her while she’s driving, and not fear for my life.” Without even a blink, Lori said “when you stop getting a car with her.” I laughed at the time but 13 years later, I realize she was absolutely right.
YA wanted to drive on Thanksgiving. She said it was to see if she could get better mileage on her new car (she bought it in July) but I think it was really to show it off to the Thanksgiving crowd. She drives closer to other cars than I do and it makes me nervous. I put my foot out a couple of times as if I could brake. YA thought this was pretty funny.
She did NOT think it was funny on the way home. It was dark and a couple of times she pulled into a lane with very little space between us and the car in front. I tell myself that she actually drives more these days than I do and she hasn’t had an accident yet. But I’ll admit that at one point I gasped and threw my hands out in front of me. It was involuntary. She gave me a stern warning and I sat on my hands the rest of the way home.
I don’t have these kind of issues when I’m riding with other folks. I went all over Nashville two weeks ago with my friend Pat driving and never flinched once!
I hope everyone was able to have the kind of Thanksgiving they wanted.
My friend Jia, teaching English over in South Korea, didn’t get a Thanksgiving this year and she missed it a lot.
Someday I need to learn brevity. But not today!
I figured out how to get 10 pounds in a 5 pound bag (from last week), you just get rid of 5 pounds. That happen when my truck had a dead battery. Or two. (because it’s a diesel, it uses two batteries to start) so the whole trip to Northfield and then John Deere got postponed and instead, I went out and finished chisel plowing.
This picture is the last bit of ground to be worked up. And that was a ‘mic drop’ moment. Whew. If you notice the line on the hood of the tractor, I scrubbed the left side to remove the grime, but not the right side. It DOES look nicer, and make a difference and I’d like to get the rest scrubbed off. Depends on the weather. I used the hose and washed off the chisel plow and some of the tractor, since the pressure washer is already tucked away for winter and too much trouble to get back out. (Boy, next year, with my new heated shop, it won’t be such an issue! Maybe!)
A highlight for this last day of fieldwork was adding a steering wheel spinner. Dad had them on all the tractors. Back in the 1990’s, my hand would cramp up (already had carpel tunnel, evidently) and I took them all off. Now, making all the turns on the ends of the fields, with my fingers tucked around a steering wheel spoke, makes my fingers sore. And since I had carpel tunnel surgery several years ago, I put spinners back on. It worked well.
When you look at this photo, you’ll see two fields planted to rye:
on the left and right of the tractor. It’s hard to tell how much of that is oats regrowing or the rye I planted late. The oats will not over-winter; it will die off. The rye will survive and grow again. Meaning come spring, and these fields will be planted to corn, I’ll need to have the rye “terminated”. Plowing it up won’t stop it. And if it’s a warm wet spring and it’s late spraying, it will be really tall, meaning there ends up being a lot of trash (plant material) to move through the equipment and it makes a tough seed bed. So, we’ll see. I look at this photo and I see a potentially difficult spring, and a leaking hydraulic hose on the chisel plow, and how I should replace all the hydraulic hoses on it, and the chisel shovels I need to replace. But the sky is pretty.
Doing the fieldwork really is meditative. I had my tractor buddy with me and I saw bald eagles. Boy, there was a lot of ears of corn on the ground this year, in some fields more than others. Damn deer, they tear off a lot of ears and nibble on it a bit. And it was a mixed bag this year because of the drought. The stalks were shorter than normal, and more brittle than normal, and then because the stalks and corn dried out sooner, it was easy for the deer to reach them, easier to pull off, easier for all the kernels to pop off the ear.
Driving around, I would see ‘combine loss’ in the fields, kernels that didn’t get into the combine. Kernels on the ground is not helpful and it means money lost. There are a lot of extra attachments to help corn or soybeans get into the combine. Air systems to blow kernels in, brushes to help feed the kernels in, extra brushes so they don’t pop out. But I don’t own the combine, so… not much I can do about that. Kernels might pop off because the soybean pods are so dry, they split open just from being ‘jostled’ before the combine header gets to them. Or the corn ear might break off the stalk, hit the header, and fall on the ground, or hit hard enough the kernels fly off. Harvesting is kind of a cataclysmic process, yet it needs to be somewhat gentle not to damage the kernel. There’s a lot happening in the moment in the combine, and it’s not surprising to see kernels on the ground. But there was a lot this year, and it means money lost and it’s kinda frustrating because there’s nothing I can do about it. I’ll try calling it the angels share.
We got some mail order pork delivered In a box with dry ice. I got some hot water and we had some fun.
You wouldn’t think the most dangerous part of farming would be trying to adjust the right-hand mirror on the tractor. It’s 8 feet up, out in the middle of nothing. When at home, I use a step ladder to adjust it. Then out in the field, I hit a tree branch and it gets knocked out of place. And there I am climbing up over the three-point hitch and onto the tire trying to get this back out in place and focused right. And trying to get back down, I think about all the hard, sharp edges, and pointy things I can snag myself on, or fall on to, and sometimes I leave the mirror where it is. Newer tractors have steps to reach allow cleaning the windows and reaching the mirror. And the ‘delux’ cab, has remote mirrors. Someday.
Next week, did we make any money?
ANY QUESTIONS ABOUT ANY OF THIS? YOUR LAST ‘MIC DROP’ MOMENT?
Over the weekend I was driving in the left lane on 66th when a white car pulled in front of me. I was started to grumble my usual sarcastic “Thanks for signaling” when I noticed the driver had his left arm sticking straight out of his window. After a bit I thought maybe he was signaling his turn but that seemed so ancient of a gesture that I was sure I was wrong. Then he signaled again with his arm when he moved over into the left-turn lane.
His brake lights were working fine so I don’t know if his turn lights don’t or if he just likes the breeze on his arm on a lovely day. What I do know is that using your arm for a turn signal, while it was taught routinely when I was a kid, is not taught now. YA had no idea what I was talking about when I asked her.
Do you have air-conditioning in your car? Or do you prefer opening the windows to get the breeze?
