July 6, 2013

View of the day-The last load leaves the bins at Timken....but will he make the corner with the long load?

The plan was to be at the bins by 9am, but with no heavy schedule, it turned out to be, get out of bed by 9am.  Al went and paid the camping bill...$9/night...that was a bonus!  Marilyn got the dish ready to load under the camper...fits like a dream...then Al got all the outside stuff broken down and Marilyn tied down the innards.

We hit the bins and while we waited for the General and combine trailer to air up, Marilyn tried to "Mickey Mouse" together a monitor for the backup camera, with no luck. Al figured we could work on it another time and he would just go without it this trip...the roads were plenty wide.

We encountered a few wind turbine blades being moved down the highway.  They aren't wide, but they are a really long load, which means lots of pilot cars, front and back.  We were meeting them on the straight-a-way, but as we got to the overpass on the interstate, we could see that we weren't the only ones using the back road across from the 183 highway. 

Marilyn let Al know that there were a couple more blades coming his way, so he pulled over about a half mile back of the bridge to wait.  This picture is of the first one coming over the bridge and the next one is the second one pulling across the highway to somehow back around the corner and straighten out to follow the other truck...something to see, all right.

The heat was on us again, hitting 100ºF for part of the afternoon and we thought we would try to go as far as Ansley, NE.  First, we stopped in Stockton, parking out by the Freightliner and header at the fair grounds...along with several other harvesters. We took the pickup and camper over to the town park to see if there was a spot for us to park for the night.  There was, so we got the rig set up, plugged in and cooling, then went back to the fair ground.

Marilyn got hooked up to the header trailer and we headed north to Ansley.  We were doing so well, until just south of Holdrege, NE.  We were rounding the curve into town, when there was an explosion...Marilyn knew it was a tire on the header trailer...and Al could see the shrapnel flying, so we pulled over right away.

Al sent Marilyn into town while he got the trailer jacked up and, what was left of the tire, removed.  He told her to go to the Cenex on the east end of town, which she did and when she went in...at 3:57pm, and asked for a tire, they said "sorry, there's no way, we just sent the guys home and have started on our paperwork"...Seriously?!  After asking where else she could go, they gave her directions to Orscheln's on the other side of town.

She went over and they were only to happy to put a new tire on the rim.  The tire that we were getting repaired was that "fine looking" spare that we had been hauling around in the back of the pickup.  Al figured we might as well get that replaced and use it, after Marilyn called him to give him the news that there was a tire, he asked if they had another one and we would just get the shredded one replaced at the same time.  They had another one, so Marilyn went back out to the header trailer and got the other tire.  The man had her back out at the truck with both tires in under 30 minutes!  This is the town we got the last tire for the header trailer on the way down...no jinx.

Once she got back there, Al was ready to put the new tire on, but discovered the jack was already as high as it would go...which wasn't high enough to to get the tire lined up to the lugs.  Time to get the shovel and dig a trench.  That did the job, and we were ready to roll once again.

We nicely got into town and had to wait at the stop lights as another part of a wind turbine was making the corner.  We had no idea how he was going to do that without hitting any street signs, when someone came out and just pulled the sign out of the cement.  Apparently they must have to do that a lot, but it was something else to see how the back pusher rig worked the end of that tower piece around the corner.

The rest of the trip was uneventful...thankfully...and we were in Ansley and parked well before dark.  We fueled up, grabbed a drink and started back for Stockton.  We stopped in Holdrege to have our one meal for the day at McDonald's, then stopped for dessert at...you guessed it...Sonic, for a shake.

We drove back to Stockton, got cleaned up and called it a day...a pretty productive day.

Didn't we tell you something's bound to happen...?