“How did it get so late, so soon?
It’s night before it’s afternoon,
December is here before June.
My goodness how the time has flewn,
How did it get so late, so soon?”
-Dr. Seuss

Nothing beats a Kansas Sunset. Ford, Kansas

I remember being a little kid and time seemed to go so slow. How soon is my birthday? When’s Christmas? Why are we driving so slow? I want to go to Grandma’s now! My parent’s would laugh and tell me “wait until you’re older”.

Well, I’m not “old” by any means but the past few years, holy crap do I understand what they mean. I’m not sure how time the time flies by, whether you’re having fun or not.

We’ve been staying in Dodge City for almost two weeks now and it’s been slow going. Previous storms and high winds have laid almost all wheat down. Anyone who has run a combine knows that this is the total shits. It’s not just “our” wheat. It’s everyone’s in the area. It only proves that Mother Nature is always Boss.

We breezed right through Oklahoma, and now Dodge City has crept us to almost a standstill. Any time we thought we had gained has now been pretty much lost. Mother Nature decided to throw a nasty heat wave through out the entire Midwest and Plains region making everything ready way too close together. I know of crews that have been harvesting in Idaho already.

I’ve been in a black & white mood lately.

It’s. Been. Hot. Like over 100 degrees hot. The type of heat where it sucks the energy out of you, makes you not want to eat, and no amount of air conditioning in the middle of the day makes it bearable when you’re in and out of the pickup. I’m glad that the combines and tractors have awesome air conditioning so that the “kids” are comfortable. As long as they don’t break down or have any problems, they’re fine. Heat waves like this make me want to make shorts, but crawling around on the ground in wheat stubble in shorts or getting covered in chaff gets pretty itchy pretty quick. I dug around online and found some super lightweight military issue paratrooper type cargo pants. They breathe much easier and are more comfortable than jeans in this heat. I know I’ve gotten some derogatory comments about wearing military cargo pants, work boots, and tank top with a baseball hat (heard the word “dyke” get muttered once when I ran to get lunch at Jimmy John’s). As to that, a big middle finger to that chauvinistic pig.

The now nicknamed Goodfeathers outside of our hotel. (Which you probably won’t get unless you remember Animaniacs.)

Like I wrote at the beginning of this entry, the days have been blending together. Looking back on the calendar, all I can really say is that it’s been a lot of long but slow days. Nothing big has gone wrong, the guys have settled into their grooves for the most part, and we can feel confident leaving the field for awhile to get stuff done without too much supervision. The nine combines are now broken up into three different crews. I’ve either spent the day sitting in one field and only running to get lunch, or I’ve spent the whole day running around and not staying in one place for more than an hour.

Late evening on the last field of the night is always my favorite time.

It rained last Saturday, and I’m not ashamed that I spent the whole day sleeping. I woke up in the morning to tell everyone to go back to bed, then woke up for lunch, and woke up again for supper. Sunday was Father’s day, and we managed to move a few combines and start around 5pm to only shut down around 930.

We knew it was going to rain yesterday, but had hoped it would have held off a few more hours, at least so one crew could finish cutting the last field of seed triticale.

Waiting for the storm. Mike apparently has no legs.

First storm rolling in yesterday. Ford, Kansas.

That didn’t happen. Nothing was accomplished besides servicing combines and blowing off another air-to-air on a truck. Everyone went and ate lunch, and again, I slept most of the afternoon after taking a care of of some paperwork. Matt and I went to see the late viewing of Finding Dory in 3D and I wasn’t disappointed. There was two other people in the whole theater and all of us were adults. Bonus: Dreamlounger seats. I don’t think I can go to the movies without those seats anymore.

It rained again a few more times last night and this morning, so it’s another day at a standstill. Matt went out with some of the crew to replace a load cell in a grain cart and do some other odds and ends, but I really didn’t need to go out there. I’ve been catching up on some emails, a bit of editing and writing, and we’ll see what the afternoon brings.