July 10, 2011

View of the day-Big thanks to the Schemper “Harvesting for helping us out on a Sunday with a tire on the header trailer.

We had a big storm blow through around midnight…the worst one we have been through this summer. The wind came out of the east and we thought it was going to remove some awnings…and rain…we didn’t have a gauge out, but there must have been at least an inch. Fortunately the camper stayed upright and we were able to get some sleep.

We made AIS by 6:25am…just ahead of schedule, which was a good start to the day. We drove the 8 miles to Liebenthal to get the Freightliner fired up and when Marilyn checked the rain gauge on the combine…the chaff in it had soaked up what little rain had fallen there. After hooking up the header, we were ready to roll.

It was an uneventful trip…at least as far as Phillipsburg, where we had to get the pickup header hooked on behind the cart trailer. Marilyn stopped at the CaseIH dealer to unhook the straight header trailer, so she could get the pickup head and take it north of Phillipsburg to where Al was waiting at the old weigh scale. We got the header hooked on in no time at all, then we went back to get the straight header.

Marilyn had noticed the back tire on the trailer was worn pretty bad and there were some slits where it was starting to separate. We had a spare tire with us…another stroke of luck…so we took it with us and changed it over…aaaand…it didn’t have enough air in it. Al figured there was enough to limp it the 24 miles up to Alma where we could air it up the rest of the way…so that is exactly what we did.

When we got to Alma, Marilyn tried to get to the air hose at the truck stop…it was in a bizarre place where you couldn’t reach because of the parked vehicles. A pickup pulled up and it was one of Al’s trucking cohorts from the Schemper crew out of Nebraska. After catching up with her on how their season had gone so far, we decided to try across the road at the Cenex for air…there was a hose…a long hose. Of course, it would have been nice if they had left the compressor on for the weekend…well, it was Sunday, after all. Fortunately for us, Ms. Schemper saved the day…their semis were parked at the Cenex along with their fuel trailer, which had a compressor on it, so we got the tire filled and were on our way.

We had one more pit stop at Springview, NE to grab a quick snack and have a stretch, then it was forward on to Hamill. It had heated up a lot during the drive and the humidity here was a killer, so by the time we got to Hamill, it was the worst part of the day and wouldn’t you know it…the wheels fell off and our luck changed…sort of.

Al had unhooked the pickup head on the road just at the turnoff to Hamill while Marilyn took the straight header up to the old school grounds where we always park. She was just going to go get the pickup head when Al called for assistance backing his rig back into it’s parking space. He managed to get the trailer directly across the road…then it high-centered and would not move…not good. While we were investigating the situation, we noticed a huge puddle under the engine of the Freightliner…a hose had blown and the antifreeze was gushing out.

So now, we can’t even use the Freight to try and move anything without coolant…and we have to get the trailer unhooked and get the truck moved out of the way before we could unload the tractor and cart to move the trailer. The plot thickens.

We got the trailer lifted off the hitch with the tractor hydraulics, then we hooked the Freight up to the Dodge and Marilyn pulled it around the block, trying to get it moved over to the lot before the air ran out and the brakes locked on. Stage one completed.
We lowered the tongue of the trailer with the tractor hydraulics,..problem number two showed up. We always have to use ramps to unload because the tractor hitch just clears the trailer…something we learned after a catastrophe early on in our loading career. Because the trailer was high-centered on the road, the tongue was about two feet too high to unload. We decided we had to try and pull it backwards off the road.

We went over to see if Cal, our Hamill landlord, had a tractor that was big enough to pull us back. The only thing he had at the yard was a JD 4020, but he thought we could give it a try…no go, so we had to come up with another plan.

Cal had some 8ft railroad ties that weighed about 150lbs each…did we mention the heat and humidity?? We got four of the ties, and did some stacking and arranging to make ramps so we could at least get the rig unloaded…that turned out a bit ugly. Cal and Marilyn were moving the ties around as the cart came off the trailer and freed them up, once the tractor started to move back, the weight of the tractor settled the tongue down onto the road and lifted the back end up, just like a teeter-totter…now we were getting somewhere.

As soon as the back tires were off the ramp, the trailer wanted to lift again, so we tried blocking up the back tires and Cal got the back wheel of the 4020 on one of the cradles for the cart to hold the trailer down so the tractor could get free of the trailer…then it fell off the ramp…but it was off the trailer. The cart had started to jack knife a bit so Cal came over with his tractor, we put a chain on the back of the cart and pulled it over so Al could go straight back and clear the trailer with the front axle of the tractor.
With the tractor free, we hooked a chain up to the back of the cart and FINALLY pulled the trailer backwards off the road and into the infirmary next to the Freight. All of us were soaking wet from the heat and humidity but we still had the ties and ramps to move…which we had help from a couple of young fellows recruited by Cal.

All that remained was to get the pickup head off the road and get it parked with everything else…that was the easiest job so far…once that was done we were on the road back to LaCrosse.

We had been watching the skies…there were some dark clouds to the SW that concerned us and as we got further into Nebraska, there were weather warning for the area we were going to be driving through to get back ‘home’. We figured we could beat the first one by getting past it and south before it hit…winds up to 70mph and hail…we did.

There was a stronger line of storms to the south of the one we squeaked by earlier, but we still figured if we could at least make it to the big truck stop at Elm Creek, NE and we would sit it out there…we didn’t make it. About 10 miles north of Elm Creek the big winds hit…very scary as we were driving through the hills with gullys that are great channels for the wind. Al had bothe hands on the wheel and was able to make it through that part of the obstacle course…then the rain hit…or rather, the wall of water. It just POURED…the RainEx on the windows earned its keep, so we could at least see to get to the truck stop…and it was packed with people that had the same idea.

We grabbed a coffee and snack, then went back out to the pickup to relax and check the radar out online. It had let up so we figured we might as well carry on, after all…how much worse could it be? It wasn’t worse. There was still a terrific amount of lightning and it was raining, just not as hard but we forged…it was getting to be a long day already.

12:30am and we still have 25 miles to go...