December 21, 2011

View of the day-No, it’s not the same picture…we just watched this combine get built and drove it off the line.

Lots of catching up to do since the last blog entry. We had a big road trip to Calgary, Alberta to attend the Association of Canadian Custom Harvesters annual convention. The weather was fantastic for this time of year…no snow, above freezing…at least until we got to Calgary. We met up with Lynn and Gerry on Tuesday night when we got there and did some shopping for the fundraising auction and scholarship raffle, before calling it a night to rest up for the next three days of ‘meetings’.

When we woke up in the morning, it was white with about 6 inches of snow…and the wind was blowing, resulting in blizzard conditions and closed roads. Apparently we got there in the nick of time. We were thrilled to have a contingent from the US Custom Harvesters Association attending the convention. President Tracy Zeorian and her husband Jim from Nebraska, VP Kent Braaten from ND and Roger and Lisa Sammons, a board member from Montana. Tracy started a blog this year and updates it a bit more regular during the off season than Marilyn does. And the Sammons were featured in Harvest a 4 episode reality show on the History Channel…reality being used loosely…but great harvesting shots.

We came up just short on the auction…we didn’t come home with a second mini combine, even though we bid it up way more than we did on the last one. Too bad the auctioneer decided the combine would sell like the big ones did and split the header and trailer from the main unit. Really…what would you do without the header and trailer? We also bid on a VIP trip for two to Belgium to tour the New Holland factory…missed it by ‘that much’…but maybe they will have another one at the US Harvesters convention in March. We did end up bringing home a new portable Weber BBQ to take with us in the camper…unfortunately it is plastered up with John Deere logos. But it should work great…we know how well they burn.

The snow was pretty much gone by the time we had to start back home, so the trip back to Yorkton was not as bad as we had anticipated. Al had stopped to look at a toy collection on the way out to Calgary and had planned on picking it up on the way home, but the lady wasn’t at home and it was just as well, because we had a truck full without the extra four boxes. Looked like another road trip was in our future.

Marilyn had another dinner theatre to set up for, this time on the road in Spy Hill. Those are always a lot of fun…the stage is sooo much smaller and the cast never gets to rehearse, so the performance is a crap shoot. Even so, this was the best audience we had for the five night run. The next day she was on the road to Regina with Pam and Teresa…her “Queen of Bingo” girls, to volunteer for Theatre Saskatchewan’s dinner theatre on the Saturday night. Sunday, she got to stop in Moose Jaw to visit her mom and dad, then drive out to get the toys that Al had purchased. That will go on “the list”.

Al finally went back to work at H&R and Marilyn was back trying to placate the Christmas shoppers at Staples…doesn’t the season just bring out the best in people?

Time for one more, very important, road trip. We left right after Marilyn finished work on Sunday, Dec 18 at 5pm and raced for the border, so we could cross before they closed…we made it with a half hour to spare. We continued on to Jamestown, getting there around 1am and booked into the Super 8 for the night. Monday, we continued on to Grand Island, but we had to take a bit of a detour, to pick up some toys in Wakonda, SD, that Al had purchased in an online auction. It was a bit out of the way, but we had the whole day to get to Grand Island and we made it there by 8pm…just in time for Al to watch the power outage on Monday Night Football at the hotel.

Tuesday morning, we were at the CNH welcome centre, to get geared up to watch our combine being built. We had decided to get one of the last 7088 combines to be built with the Cummins Tier III engine and it was down to the wire as the line was shutting down on Thursday. We had our favorite tour guide, Lew, spend the day with us, taking us directly to the station where our combine was getting the cab installed. This year, Al got to turn the key to start the engine for the first time…and it took off like a top. He also got to stay in the cab through the next four stations as it passed all the diagnostic tests with flying colors.

We took a lunch break, then got to see more of the factory, this time we got to see more of the windrowers being built. Marilyn is trying to figure out how she can get that roomy swather cab on her combine. There are approximately 1100 people employed in this factory and as we passed by each of the stations, they all greeted us and thanked us for buying CaseIH, some stopped to chat when they were finished their tasks and were waiting for the line to move. We watched as one lady was putting a sieve into the main frame of a 7088 and when Lew told her we were there to see our combine being built, she said “you must be Al and Marilyn”…wow, we were impressed!!

We got back to our combine in time to watch them putting the decals and tires on, then we watched from the cab as they did some of the final testing. We got our picture taken in front of our new combine by Charlene Goeden, the tourmistress extrordinaire for the plant, then Al drove it off the line and out the door.

Back in the visitor’s centre, as we were getting ready to leave, the plant manager came down and thanked us personally for choosing CaseIH and they gave us a framed picture of us with an engraved plate that had the date, serial number and our names on it. He asked us if we had any questions about the tour or the combine and Marilyn actually stumped him with a question on the frequency of greasing on a particular zerk…the answer is yet to come. They even called Kelly Burgess down out of his ivory tower to see if he knew the answer…Kelly was the big push behind the building of our Mini combine, so it was nice to see him on his home turf.

We said our goodbyes and hit the road around 5pm and started on the marathon drive back home. We weren’t sure how far we were going to go, we just pointed north…shut up and drive. About the time we hit central South Dakota, we decided to get as far as Selby and book a room for the night. That way we could get an early start in the morning…AIS 8am.

We ended up AOS…Ahead of Schedule…at 7:30am. We were interested in finding out how the construction on the highway turned out, north of Selby…we had suffered through the detour all summer long…surely it was finished by now. But of course, this is South Dakota we are talking about. The signs were all down…so far so good…but after we turned the corner…NOTHING WAS DONE! In fact, the first 5 or so miles were so full of craters, we thought we were in Saskatchewan. What the hell had they been doing all summer?? We went down a stretch of highway in Nebraska that had been completely redone and we never saw an orange sign…and it was between backhauls last summer. Enough about that.

We stopped ran into some snow in southern North Dakota, but before we hit the highway north of Bismarck the sun was shining, but now we had a brisk wind to drive into. We stopped in Minot for lunch, then stopped again in Kenmare for Al to pick up all the toys that had been shipped there for him, then it was on to the border. We stopped on the US side to turn in our H2A work visas...pretty sure we wouldn't be doing any more harvesting this year...then had an even briefer stop on the Canadian side. We had another couple of pit stops, one in Carlyle for a visit with Marilyn's sister and one in Whitewood...you guessed it...to pick up some more toys.

We finally got home and since last Sunday, we had logged just under 2000 miles...but that's the story of our life these days. Now we get ready for the Christmas rush and hopefully the next entry will contain our annual newsletter...