… the weather looked distinctly less-than-promising this morning. Although we had spent the evening sitting out in a gentle warm breeze, watching the stars, something must have happened during the night and it all looked so depressing.
We were however told by the guy in charge of the airport that the day would brighten up, and as the morning wore on and the competitors began to arrive, some of them brought the nice weather with them and by the time the competition got itself under way, we had a bright scorching sunshine
There was nothing else here apart from the tractor pulling – no fairground or showground as at Clinton the other week.
And not that I know very much about tractor pulling, but the track looked to be in far better condition. And so it should have been, considering the effort that had gone into preparing it the morning of the event (it pays to be at places like this early so that you can see exactly what is going on).
Here’s one of our old friends, a grader similar to the thousands that we encountered in 2010 during our marathon drive along the Trans Labrador Highway
(except that this one has griffers on the back) smoothing to track out ready for the compactors to compress down.
. There were several more classes of truck than at Clinton, although nothing like as many entries, and the event was over long before nightfall.
What didn’t help was the number of breakdowns. All kinds of things were going wrong for some of the drivers – clutches disintegrating and the like. On one old truck, the effort to pull the sledge pulled a universal joint clean out of the si=ocket in the centre of the propshaft and I can’t say that I’ve ever seen that happen before, although on one of my old taxis many years ago, an out-of-balance propshaft tore the mounting out of the floor of the car.
In the middle of the contest Darren did a demonstration run in “Perdy in the Pink”, and then Hannah had her first effort. And when I find the USB lead to charge up the camcorder (which somehow I seem to have forgotten to bring), I’ll put a video of her run on here. Dad made 341 feet and a bit, and Hannah, putting everything that she had into it, did 337 feet, which is pretty spectacular considering that she’s only just 16.
Her second run though, she was doing even better until the fuel line split and sprayed ethanol all over her and the track at about 50psi. Nevertheless, first place in her class and in the top 10 overall is something to be proud of.
Highlight of the day has to be the guy who came over to me while I was filming and said “How do you manage to stand so close to the tractors and film then with all of the noise that they are making?” to which I replied “what?”.
And we can’t be bothered to go home tonight so we’re sitting here talking, drinking and watching the storm clouds gather. It’s going to be rough tonight.
