by Ever since we built the shop we have been wanting to pile up the dirt mounds higher to make a ski run, so to speak, and just because. Tuesday it looked like the weather on Wednesday would be suitable for that kind of work so I took Wednesday off, rented a skid loader and gave it a shot. Gary Shewbert was kind enough to tow the skid loader for me. I don’t have a vehicle with a tow package and Gary even had a trailer. It turned out, though, that the skid loader was a bit much for his trailer so we wound up using the rental shop’s trailer. That would normally have cost an extra $30 but they didn’t charge me because we brought our own trailer and they advised against using it. The skid loader weighs 6,500 pounds.
Beside not knowing whether the skid loader would do the job, I was worried about the hazards of operating it. I had no experience, of course, and even though they are simple, there is always a learning curve. I knew pushing the dirt up on the mounds and getting up there with a top heavy piece of equipment would run the risk of turning the dang thing over. I had a couple of frights, one where I felt I was going over backwards and another when I felt like I was going over sideways. Just backing it off the trailer was exciting but I managed to avoid crashing.
After a while I got the hang of driving the skid loader but never felt like I got the coordination down very well. Everything is controlled by two joy sticks: push both forward or backwards to move in that direction and/or push them in opposite directions to turn; push the left control left to raise the bucket and right to lower it; and push the right control left or right to change the angle of the bucket. I started off pretty good but as the day wore on I began to realize I probably wasn’t going to accomplish what I hoped to. After about six hours of almost non-stop activity, I began to tire and lose what little coordination I had developed. Although I had the machine until Thursday morning, I could see I wasn’t going to finish and the weather was supposed to turn bad during the night, so Joyce called Gary and asked him to come back so we could load the machine back on the trailer and get it back to the rental place. One of the unforseen problems I encountered was that the skid loader, weighing as much as it did, really packed down the dirt and moving it created giant hard clods where before the dirt was unpacked and consistently clodless. Maybe I accomplished something because the two bigger Wylie girls and the Zbinden girls played on the mounds Thursday afternoon enough to get themselves really dirty, much to heir mothers’ dismay since it was too chilly to just hose them off in the yard.
In other news, Joyce flew to Dallas Thursday and Jill picked her up at the airport on her way out of town. Joyce worries about Jill making the drive to Amarillo with the little ones by herself. They arrived in good shape early Thursday evening and didn’t encounter weather worse than rain. Speaking of rain, we got a little of that yesterday, maybe as much as half and inch but probably a little less. That will be fine if it doesn’t have to last us for another month or two.