View of the day-Al back in the harvest hauling seat for a few miles.We were checking the UPS sight all night and into the morning to see when the part might show up at Northgate. The last time Marilyn looked, it had been scanned out at Sioux Falls, SD at 6am...things were looking good. When Al got online to check after 8am, he saw that the package had been delayed for a day due to weather. What!? Unacceptable.
He got on the phone to find out what weather, since it wasn't showing anything other than light rain. He had to talk to an agent somewhere in the Asian Pacific and he got nowhere, but mad, trying to find out what weather and where it was in transit. She eventually hung up on him, so he called back in again and made a point of asking for someone in North America...of course, they tell him they can't do that, so he keeps telling them to hang up so he can take the "service quality" survey that was mentioned at the beginning of the call...he had a few things to tell them.
He eventually got to talk to someone in Tampa and he was able to tell Al that the weather that held it up was fog at Minot. By this time, it was showing the part had been scanned in at Minot, but now the delivery trucks had already left the depot before it arrived, so it wouldn't go out until tomorrow. Unacceptable. He called his toy buddy, Pete the partsman, at Gooseneck Implements in Kenmare to see if he had a direct number for the depot and hallelujah, he did!
Al called to see if we could just go to Minot and pick it up at the depot and the lady that answered was so helpful and said anytime would work, because they were there 24 hours. We were on the road, finally.
We needed to get the parts to Windthorst after we picked them up and had the two bearings that we had gotten in Yorkton yesterday that also needed to get dropped off. However, we didn't want to take them across the border with us, so we dropped them at Kim and Marg's at Carlyle, then hit the road.
We had just left their farm when we got a call from one of our American harvester friends that had been combining in Canada...they had been pulled over by the DOT and were having a few issues getting their rigs to the border. They were only 20 miles from it when they got stopped.
The following is a watered down version of what happened, otherwise it might get a little long winded and raw...the DOT has that effect on harvesters.
With the oil business slowed down to a crawl, they had to get funds somewhere and must have popped the champagne when they saw the four semis loaded with combines, tractor and grain cart. By the time we got there, they had already unloaded the tractor and grain cart and the driver was well on his way roading it to the border...issue with the trailer it was on. Without going into too much detail, Al offered to drive their semi-loads, one at a time with the driver in the cab with him, while Marilyn followed in the pickup. About 4 miles from the border, he let the driver take over and we went back for another rig. They were able to get the rest of the rigs across on their own.
We got to the UPS store, picked up our parts...and some that Pete needed...stopped for a Sonic shake, then started back home. After dropping Pete's parts off at Kemare, we swung by Kim's to get the bearings we had left there...and stopped to watch a quarter of NFL football...then headed for Windthorst to drop off our parts in the will-call box, before going back to the camper.
What a joy ride...
1 comment:
Was that part of Holland Harvesting crew the DOT was giving some Canadian hospitality ?
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