Meanwhile, Back At The Patch

 THIS is how you catch a cold.  No fever, no real aches and pains, just a nose you couldn't hammer a nail through.  It's one of those not bad enough to stay home things, but by the end of the day you wished you HAD stayed home.  

The field trip kids were amazing yesterday.  Yes ma'am, no ma'am, please and thank you.  No one was running amok and NO ONE got in trouble for anything.  It was one of the Christian schools that has been open for about two months.  No sick teachers, no sick kids.  Amazing how Covid has completely left them alone!!  All the other teachers in the County are refusing to go to work. 

 Anyway, here's a good example of the bug that bit me.  I'm hoping he's completely dead now and I'm on the mend.  The only bad thing is sneezing into a mask can be messy.

 

After the kids were on their way into the patch, I opened the snack bar and got to sit for a couple of hours.  At least I'm not alone.  The Pastor's wife has the same cold and passed on her supply of cough drops.  Horrible tasting, but they actually helped clear my nose a tad so people could actually understand what I was saying.

 

We opened to the public at 3:00 and I immediately had customers on the hay ride.  Cool ... I can mindlessly drive the tractor till 7:00.  Today's story involves an employee ... a would-be tractor driver.  He will drop everything "cleaning" (which is his job), to drive the second hay ride.

 

Trouble is, he's doesn't know xxxx ... well you know.  I give the people a good ride.  He was screaming around the corners so fast people had to hang on, then coming up behind me and hitting the brakes, causing heads to flop around.  There he sat for five minutes loaded with people while I loaded my trailer.  

 

I asked the girl who helps us to tell him to slow down.  Next round, he says "I" need to speed up.  Well ... you can just imagine my reaction.  You buddy have been driving tractor for about a week.  I've been driving for 65 years.  It's not a race track ... it's about giving the customer a nice ride.

After some urging from me, he finally slowed down, but his takeoffs and landings were atrocious.   I laughed when the girl told me he always took off with a hard jerk.  Apparently there was no clutch finessing.  She asked him why I always took off so smooth.  He was aghast!!  How could that be?

Maybe if I'm feeling it, I'll teach him how to use a clutch.  With no one in the cue, he just kept driving around empty.  I finally called him off by radioing his "boss".  He was so sad.  I was so happy!!

So this was me this morning.  I shooed the puppies out of the bedroom so I could sleep another 30 minutes.  That was a big mistake because it took me an hour to clean up the mess I found when I opened the door. 

 

 

Today - field trips and snack bar.  Too bad for me the owner wants to serve hot food every night now.  That means longer hours.  RATS!!  I thought I was getting closer to the end.  

Total miles walked:  199.81   No tractor miles included.  Hard even for me to believe.