OLD GEAR

“Is the wheel supposed to look like that? On a funny angle like that? Is that normal?”

John had just got back from work. I needed him to look at the back wheels of the four wheeler before he got to the house and sat down. He suffers from permanent exhaustion working in the heat all day.  Once he gets to the house he seldom comes out again.

“No, that is not normal. What did you do to it.” This was a rhetorical question and needs neither a question mark nor an answer. I watch him awkwardly kneel down and peer under the vehicle. Having been brought up Catholic with the mandatory baggage of guilt I am thinking to myself that it is probably something I did that broke the bike John found out the back of the workshop one year, put a new battery in it and called it good. I start it with a screw driver as the key is years lost. I never drive over 15 miles an hour because I am afraid it will fall apart. Apparently it is. Falling apart.

“I rode on it. Just to the other side.” Actually I ride on it everyday to the other side, yesterday back and forth through the hay fields,  pulling weeds out of the cut oats for hours, stacking them up high in the little trailer I pull behind me and dumping them on the burn pile.  The dogs standing  behind me. Watching.

The four wheeler was not the problem yesterday. The old hay rake was. Two of my hay fields are not very wide and I drove the unwieldy, too -wide, found on the side of the road,  hay-rake into an oak tree, a telephone pole and a beanfield and almost flipped the tractor turning too close to a ditch but not the 4-wheeler.  The quad had a quiet day really.

It had been a hot and  humid hay day. The hay was slow to dry in the wet air.

“What?”

“Nothing. I did not hit anything with it.”

He gets up from his inspection of the undersides.  Using his lunchbox to push himself up.

“Park it up. I will weld it back together when I get time.”

And he has already shuffled on – empty lunchbox in hand, without waiting for an answer.  Looking for his rest corner and the undemanding iPad.

And just like that I lose my wheels.

The ducks are helping me dig a pond for them.

Hopefully today we will bale the hay. Another sticky day. This is not Hawkes Bay with its long dry summers. The humidity is high here with the wet ground and high temperatures. The drying is slow this week. The summer is short too. We need to get a lot of hay in during this short period.

So far, this is the perfect (though humid) week for hay. Just not for quads. I think they call them ATVs here – or something like that. Everyone has a different name.

I hope you have a lovely day.

celi

Tuesday 20% Precip. / 0 in
Sunny to partly cloudy. High 88F. Winds NNW at 5 to 10 mph.

Tuesday Night 10% Precip. / 0 in
A clear sky. Low near 60F. Winds NE at 5 to 10 mph.