September 17, 2018

View of the day-Getting serviced up for the last 100 acres of canola.

Friday was a day full of hope with a game plan...which turned into several, before the day was through.

Plan A-Get the combining done, which required cooperation from the weather...no sun and threat of rain would not make that easy. The guys were out warming up the machines in the morning, they got started, but it was super slow going. With only a hundred or so acres left to go, they just kept chugging along.

Marilyn had been enlisted to help her friend, Brenda, attend a quilt show in Carlyle, about 30 miles south of where we were combining. Part of Plan A was to get Al to the field, then wait for Brenda to call that she was on her way to Carlyle and passing the road to the farm...around 1 pm. Marilyn would meet her on the highway and follow her down to set up. However, Brenda got busy in the store at Yorkton and would be delayed a couple hours.

Plan B showed up when the guys were sure they would finish, even though it had sprinkled off and on. Al called to see if his trucker could make it down to haul the combine up to Canora for him. The trucker was also the same one used by one of the other custom guys that we were working with, so he needed a truck too. Fortunately, two trucks were dispatched to the farm to take care of both trips.

Marilyn's part of this second plan was to wait until she heard from Al that the truck was 40 miles away, then meet Al over at the straight header so we could load it on the high speed transport. While she was waiting for the call, she figured she might as well get the camper ready to move. She got everything disconnected and put away, then helped Al load the header, just as the trucks were pulling in.

Marilyn got the camper hooked up while the combines were getting loaded, then called Brenda. It was still busy in the store, which delayed her getting the trailer loaded to leave. 

At this point we had Plan C arrive. Marilyn would move the camper to the farm at Canora, get it set up, then go back to Yorkton and hook the trailer up at the Colette's Sewing Machines Plus, where Brenda was waiting, then we would just take one truck to Carlyle.

Al had to pilot the truck hauling the combine, so we pretty much left at the same time. We got to the farm without incident, got the camper parked and plugged in. Got the combine unloaded, then Marilyn went back to Yorkton to get Brenda and the cargo trailer.

By this time, it was well after 6pm so we were way behind schedule. We had hoped to get to Carlyle early enough to set up for the 10am start on Saturday morning. We still had over two hours to drive, so we got the trailer hooked up and headed out of town.

While Al was relaxing at home, we were rolling down the highway and got about 10 miles south of Yorkton, when we went across a rough bridge, heard a noise coming from behind us. We looked in the rear view mirror to see sparks flying from the sides of the cargo trailer!

Marilyn though she had blown a tire and was riding on the rim, so she managed to get pulled well off the road, so she could safely inspect what the problem could be. By the time she stopped, and looked back, the trailer was about 30 feet behind the truck. Apparently when she flipped the lock handle down on the ball when she hooked up, the hitch had only been sitting on top of the ball, so it wasn't even hooked up.

The chains had done their job for as long as they could before the dragging of the hitch on the highway sheared them off. They were still hanging on the truck and the wires were all pulled out of the plug, but other than that, nothing was wrecked...we hoped.

We had been hauling about 20 brand new sewing machines along with various notions, material and displayers, which we hoped hadn't gotten destroyed in the chaos. We stood there in the dark, trying to assess what we should do...it was already so late...Brenda was leaning towards telling the organizers we wouldn't be able to make it. We had called Al and he was on his way out to give us a hand.

While Marilyn and Al are old hands at the trade show circuit, Brenda had not been to one for years. Add to that not knowing the venue or how we would be able to set up in the morning with only one hour and you can imaging the stress level. Brenda's sister, Colette, owns the store and is busy enough there without going on the road, but when the lady came in asking if she could please help them out, she agreed to attend...except that Colette and her husband were away touring Newfoundland. Brenda had to fill in and she is not a quilter.

So there we were on the side of the road, waiting for Al and calling the lady at the show to cancel. She was so concerned for our health and safety, that Brenda felt sorry for her and we decided to forge ahead to the show, then deal with the mayhem in the morning. 

Brenda and Marilyn do a lot of set building for the theatre group and are used to the last minute pressures, because no matter how many months ahead of a production they start, you can always count on the fact that they will be putting the last touches on the set 30 minutes before curtain. 

Al made it to the "wreck" and we unloaded about 10 of the machines...which were untouched...to lighten up the front end of the trailer so he could try and lift it back onto the ball of the hitch. Once Marilyn and Brenda were standing on the back of the trailer for ballast, he was able to swing the hitch into place and we were back in business. The only thing we were missing was the lights, but since the truck is so wide with the duals, the tail lights could be seen...and the traffic was pretty sparse by that time. We made it to Carlyle by 11:30, totally exhausted.

The rest of the weekend went fairly smooth, considering we were really just winging it.

There were some beautiful quilts on display and they bent over backwards to make sure we were helped with the unloading and anything else we could ask for.

Saturday night we went out to Marg and Kim's place to watch the Roughriders football game. We were able to park the truck and trailer in their shop to repair the wiring for the lights, then their son Gordie, who is a welder, put new brackets on the hitch and reinstalled the safety chains...and did an excellent job. Not like those Riders...they stunk the joint out.

Sunday the show went on and was over at 4pm. We had the tear down and load up done by 5pm and after a quick snack, were on the road home. We got back to Yorkton around 8pm, unloaded the trailer at the store and called it a night. What a crazy weekend.

Today was cloudy, misty and not conducive to combining. Al took the little Dodge in to get an oil change, then we went back down to the farm at Kipling to get our straight header moved down to Carlyle. Once we had it strapped down, we said our goodbyes to the farmers,  while they were getting their seeding rig ready to go to work planting winter wheat.

We got to Carlyle, got the header parked, had a short visit, then headed for home.

Tomorrow, we are Canora bound...