November 16, 2013

View of the day-Before and after for the combine. It's official and it has been put away for the season.


Time for an update...it's been a hectic couple of weeks. Al's journey to Dyersville was short and sweet. The guys left on Wednesday morning and were back home on Sunday...a lot of driving. It was a nice ride for Al and Roger, as Ken took his truck and did all the driving and all they had to do was sit sit back and enjoy the ride. No pictures this year, unless we get some from Ken.

Marilyn finished the combining and got the combine cleaned up while he was gone. We had a couple of gorgeous days for cleaning, which made it just slightly less painful. 

This was also the weekend that the theatre group was attending a short play festival in Regina. Ours was the last of 7 performances over three days, and although we didn't bring home the brass, we did get a couple of honorable mentions. We also were adjudicated, so some of the suggestions from the workshop should go a long way to sprucing up our next five dinner theatre performances.

Since we both got home on Sunday, we had enough time to get clothes washed, load them back in to a suitcase and get ready for another road trip Monday morning. Al said AIS was to be 6:30am, since we had to drive over to Roger's farm near Lipton...which isn't far from Balcarres...then we had to unload our little cargo trailer and reload Roger's larger cargo trailer. Apparently the guys had done some shopping in Dyersville.

Once Marilyn worked her packing magic and got everything in, we went in to have lunch with Roger and Linda, then it was go time. We were pulling the cargo trailer with the dually, while Roger and Linda came in their SUV.

There were a lot of weather warnings out, but most of them had been scaled back in our part of the province, so we started out for Red Deer, Alberta and the Agri-Trade show, where the guys were setting up tables for the toy show.

We knew the first stretch of road would be horrendous, even without the bad weather, but we figured it was shorter, so we would bite the bullet and take a chance.

It was bad, but got progressively worse as we neared the Alberta border...and the last 45 miles seemed to take forever. They had gotten a lot of snow and the highways hadn't been cleaned or sanded, so it was rough and slippery.

We finally got there and were thankful that we had gone a day early. The show didn't start until Wednesday, so that gave us an extra day to set up. Now, when Al goes to toy shows, he generally gets 4 or 5 table to set up on, but because there is such a waiting list to get into the Red Deer show, they were only able to get 3 tables...two for Al and one for Roger. Oh, boy...Marilyn and Linda had their work cut out for them. Also, it was upstairs and there was only one elevator.

A lot of stuff ended up stored under the table and brought out as soon as a spot was vacated...and there was a lot of that over the four days. It turned out to be a really good show, but now the guys are worried that they won't have enough stock for the upcoming shows . That must mean more shopping.


There were a lot of interesting displays at the show...not a lot of dioramas, likely due to the lack of room...but here are a few pictures of some of the displays.

A shop display.

At the elevator with a truck dumping.

The truck being hoisted up to dump.

A custom built rig...very detailed....on Oliver row.


A custom made JD combine with a grain vac on the back, for anything coming out the back.

And the best one of all...a prototype harvester. Header width is proportionate to capacity.

The show ended on Saturday at 3pm and we were ready to face the task of packing up the tables and getting everything into the trailer. We decided earlier in the week to stay over on Saturday night and leave early in the morning, that way we wouldn't have to be in a panic to get loaded and on the road in the dark.

The shop trailer was no where near as loaded as when we came, so the packing time was greatly reduced. It had been packed to the ceiling pretty much all the way to the back when we started out.

We left at 6:30am and it was foggy and snowing. We were going to take a different route back, travelling south, then cutting across to Saskatoon and down Hwy 16, but Al got so fed up with the tailgating and swirling snow, that he turned around and drove to Edmonton and got on Hwy 16 there. Just a bit out of the way...1000 km/632 miles as opposed to 870 km/540 miles...but with four lane all the way and no snow, we still made pretty good time.

Once we finally got home, it was time for Marilyn to get back into the "zone"...the Staples zone. She had gone in to help get Christmas stock out at Liquidation World after closing time in the evenings, but now it was time to get back into the 7am frame of mind....and rehearsals were still going on.

Al had some cargo trailer rearranging to do, so he was running back and forth to Lipton. We still had a couple of beautiful days, so he was able to get the headers cleaned up...Marilyn had to leave something for him to do. He took the pickup head over to Roger's quanset to spend the winter and the MacDon will go down to Kim and Marg's for the winter.

Marilyn had ordered Al's birthday present for him, way back in the beginning of August, but it was forever on back order, so he went without. Marilyn assured him it was the best gift she had ever come up with, but wouldn't tell him what it was and now it was almost Christmas and he had just about given up, when it arrived.

It was massive, meant for two or three people to curl up in with three cup holders in each arm and a cooler on the side. Once Marilyn set it up in the living room, it dwarfed the "bridge"...Al's big LaZBoy recliner...he had to use a step stool to get into it! What a conversation piece.


So now we are pretty much settled in and now that we finally got our new furnace put in, old man winter can "bring it on"...