[AT] Ever have one of those days? :-(

[Francis Robinson]

Yesterday started out with Diana remembering that we had planned to go to
the Louisville KY farm show that day. That was about 8:30 AM and the show is
a 2 hour drive. Our level of CRS is horrible... Ok, we thought about it a
minute and decided that we could shift a couple of things and still go. I
never like to go on Saturday because Saturday is "stupid people day". Not
all of them but the Saturday crowd has a bunch that are much worse at
stopping and standing in the middle of the aisles and just don't grasp that
there are other people wanting to walk along that can't get past them.
	Right off of the bat since my thermometer refuses to turn red up very far
stuff is starting with great effort. I had noted that the volt meter on the
Astro-van was reading a little low lately and it had acted a bit weak once
before. Trying to outsmart it I had bought a new 1,000 CCA battery the night
before but had not put it in yet. OK, I'll take 5 minutes and put it in then
we can go (famous last words). While I was smart enough to buy the battery I
was not smart enough to bring it in where it was warm and put a trickle
charger on it. I don't know how long it sat on the shelf (or some warehouse)
but it was down a good bit. Naturally The van was about 20 miles from the
nearest electrical outlet. Well, maybe not 20 miles but I did have to use a
100' cord. Since I was in a hurry I also hooked the jumper cables from my
4x4 truck to it as well and finally added a portable booster pack to it as
well. Of course the engine was still about 5 below zero and probably flooded
from trying to start. I dragged out another 100' cord and started warming
the engine with two blow dryers. I focused them on an aluminum thermostat
housing which was about the only thing on the engine I could see.   ;-) I
finally got it to fire a little and then it started shortly before noon. We
took off figuring there was still plenty of time since I can only walk about
3 hours straight on concrete before I'm about ready to quit anyway. The trip
went fine on dry roads and by the time we got there instead of it being zero
outside like it was when we left home  it now about 30 degrees and nice down
there in KY.
	For those that have not been to that show it is huge... I had been ill a
couple of weeks but was feeling good and I don't know if it was related or
not but my back began hurting quickly and I was about ready to quit by the
time we covered the first aisle but decided to tough it out for a while.
Things finally got better but got bad again and I gave up after only seeing
about 3/4 of one huge hall. I never had to give up on a show before.  Then
the bad part hit. Since it was early and Scott's son Dustin who went along
was hungry we got out of town then stopped at an exit and went to
Dairy-Queen. Seems that their pipes had frozen and they could not serve
ice-cream. Now that was a bad situation...   ;-)  We left and went to
McDonalds down the road. I told Diana to get me an M&M McFlurry and I went
to find a seat to ease my back. After what seemed like about 20 minutes
Diana came over and told me that they were out of M&M's for the
McFlurries... The gods must be angry... Ok, it seems that they could fix an
Oreo McFlurry... The day was saved.   ;-)

	The reason for this post is to mention something I did manage to see. Right
in the middle of a huge display of Cub Cadet tractors and mowers was a big
fake stone with the front of a small tractor coming out of it. It was
announcing the coming release (in August I believe) of the new tractor that
was labeled on the prototype hood in the mock-up as a "CUB-CADET YANMAR". I
can't ever keep up with who has bought who or made what agreements but I had
not heard of this coming... Did MTD buy Yanmar or did they just make an
agreement?


--
"farmer"
Proud owner of several cordless hatchets and a large collection of
solid-state hammers.

"Axe me no questions and I'll tell you no lies"

Francis Robinson
Central Indiana, USA
robinson at svs.net


--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.5.441 / Virus Database: 268.18.1/690 - Release Date: 2/16/2007
2:25 PM