Comments

Usually its my practice to answer each comment, at least with a thank you.

I'm not exactly used to having this much response, though. Don't get me wrong, I love it, but since I don't have enough time to sit down and write a specific response to each of you, please consider yourselves thanked when you post a comment complimenting me.

I'll reply to any questions, or anything that I feel needs responding to, of course.

And, I'll try to remember to put something up every so often thanking everyone who has complimented me. I've found I work well under the influence of positive reinforcement, and I really do appreciate all of the compliments and want to keep them coming, so that I can keep entertaining all of you!

Plus that whole part where my momma taught me to be polite and thank folks for sayin nice things 'bout me......

Bikers Love Bugs

Working as a flagger is not all sunshine and light, and we get some really pissy people who are absolutely convinced that we get a call that they're coming, and rush to put together this whole elaborate scam, just to inconvenience their day. Of course we did. Millions of dollars spent by the government just to screw up YOUR schedule. Yes, you, in the massively expensive four wheel drive vehicle, thats never seen dirt in its life.

Mostly, though, its pretty fun. I get to be outside, albeit pretty much tethered to one spot, and I get to meet a lot of interesting people, both on the crews that we work with, and people going through.

The job I'm working now, is on US highway 287. Its a fairly busy truck route, being one of more straightforward routes between I-40 in Texas, and I-25 and I-70 in Denver. (Not even the truckers want to drive in Colorado Springs!) We get a lot of traffic, and since the paving operations involve laying down a twelve inch thick slab of concrete, we have to run traffic control twenty four hours a day. We also run a Pilot Car, since, you know, theres a twelve inch slab of concrete with pieces of re-bar sticking out of the side of it for eight miles in the north bound lane, and we're running traffic up on it, or down off of it, around some culvert replacements and bridge replacements. Pain in the patoot.

On weekends, I drive the Pilot Car. Thanks to an engine blowing in the ratty old pickup that they had been using for a pilot car last summer, the owner of the company went out and bought a 2006 diesel fueled VW Bug, in mint green. She got it cheap, when she needed it, and that little sucker will run for twenty one hours before we have to fuel it. Plus, bonus for those of us who drive in circles for twelve hours at a time, its pretty cushy inside, too. Heated leather seats, Monsoon CD stereo system, sunroof, the works. Deciding she liked the concept, she also went out and bought a used Bug, silver, with purplish go-fast type decals down the sides, tinted windows, but no CD player, which makes me sad. Now I have to load my audio books on my MP3 player and buy batteries for the wireless FM transmitter, until the green one gets out of the shop. I'm so deprived! (insert dramatic wrist to forehead fainting motion here.)

So, when you roll up on our construction, if you're first in line, you get a thirty or so minute wait, a chance to chat with the flagger, and a front row seat when the little Bug with the flashy light rolls up on your end, with a big 'ol bullrack behind it. Its an amusing sight, and I see it every day.

One of the days that I was working, as I neared the middle of the site, checking my mirrors to make sure all of my little sheepies were in a row behind me, and not deciding that they knew where to go better than I did, I hear some broken-up chatter on the company radio. Now, our radios aren't the best in the world. The big units in the vehicles do all right, but the hand helds just don't reach out and touch someone every time you need them to. So I didn't think much of it, until I heard the supervisor say something about pulling them up to the front of the line.

My first thought, medical emergency. We get a few of those: someone is having a heart attack and doesn't want to go to Podunk Hospital, so they get someone to drive them to Slightly Larger Podunk Hospital, forty five minutes away. I can't really blame them, PH isn't set up for a lot of things, doing anything more than stabilizing a heart attack patient being one of them. So, I'm preparing to speed my traffic up as much as I dare, to get them through faster so I can get the heart attack/stroke/hypochondriac victim out of our site and on their way.

I get on the radio, ask the supervisor if there's anything she wants to let me know about, and she responds that all is kosher on the south end. Not a medical emergency then. I breathe a little easier and continue on my merry way, being careful to show the people immediately behind me how to dodge the pot holes caused by bog-only-knows how many individual vehicles driving over the same lane all the freakin time. And trust me, some of those potholes could swallow the Pilot Car whole. I think we actually lost a Mini Cooper in one, but by the time I got back there to check they'd patched it again.....

As I roll up on the south end, I see a plethora of motorcycles, and I perk up a bit. Nothing like a big rumbly machine that goes between your legs to get a girl's attention. Even better, they're Harleys!

I do my little song and dance of diving out of the way of traffic and only hitting the brakes once they're not gonna smack into me, which places me in the north bound lane, facing all of the traffic that has been stopped while I've been gone, and tends to make the jumpier drivers twitch, if they happen to be in the front of the line. Only then do I notice the cameras.

It seems that the Rocky Mountain Chapter of the Harley Owners' Club were coming home from a rally in Texas, and because of the kind treatment of my supervisor, pulling them out of the exhaust fumes in the middle of the line and putting them up front where they wouldn't get as many rocks spit at them, and offering them all water, they'd been chatting with her. I maintain that her reasons for being nice to motorcycle riders stem less from a humanitarian urge and more from her desire to ogle the pretty bikes, as long as they're real road bikes. I've never seen her pull a crotch rocket up front.

So they decided they wanted pictures of the bug, and had their cameras ready. They got a couple snapped as I pulled in and came to a stop, and then my twisted sense of humor kicked in.

See, it gets HOT in southeastern Colorado in the summer... so I had stripped down to my sports bra underneath my regulation blind-me green vest. I slip the car into park, rummage in the back seat for my regulation orange hard hat, plonk it on my head over my S&W 1911 ball cap and climb out. I saunter to the front of the car, rip open my vest (yay snaps for dramatic effect!) and pose against the hood of the car, saying "If you're going to take a picture, take a REAL picture!"

They loved it.

I'm pretty sure I'm on a clubhouse wall somewhere, now.

Kids and Hoses

The points are going out on the well where the cows are at. We've got new points, as of today, and they'll be put on tomorrow, but in the mean time there's some weird processes to go through to make sure the cows have water. Like climbing down into the well house and "flicking" (a very technical term, explained to me by my father to mean jamming a piece of wood into the points and prying them back so that the springs engage properly) the points.

Apparently the cattle were not pleased with this development, because somehow they managed to get the float knocked off the tank. So instead of having a tank full of water sitting on a pedestal of ground formed by many hooves wearing down much mud, we had an empty tank floating peacefully in a gigantic mudhole, today.

We got the tank moved, new hose run, and started filling the tank, when my bottle calf came up wanting a drink. He's just too short to reach the bottom of the tank so I let him drink from the hose. This taught the other calves how to do it, and soon I had a huddle of calves, all sticking their tongues out and lapping at the flow of water from the hose.

Soon, the huddle was all the way around the tank, and I was having to stretch across to give drinks to those opposite me. I didn't mind, they were all too short to reach the level of the water that was in the tank. I had to laugh, though, when the calves opposite the ones getting a drink would continue licking at the air, stretching as far as they could reach, to try and play in the hose.

This seems to be a pattern in little ones of any species. My two year old nephew LOVES to play in the water from the hose. I can remember loving it as a kid. Most puppies will frolic in the sprinklers with great joy.

What I want to know is, what alchemy in the rubber of a hose makes the water coming out of it so much better than any other water in the world? There has to be something, and if I could figure it out, I could sell bottled childhood, and make a mint!

Apologies

To all who will look at this blog in the morning and expect to see something other than what this is. I just can't seem to think of anything funny or entertaining to write about.

So, instead, I'll make with the time honored past time of shamelessly stealing someone else's words for inspiration.

By the way, I firmly believe that the entire works of Robert A. Heinlein should be required reading for any student before they graduate high school. Jubal Harshaw and Lazarus Long taught me more about how the "real world" works than any of my teachers did!

On with the quoting.....

"There is no way that writers can be tamed and rendered civilized or even cured. The only solution known to science is to provide the patient with an isolation room, where he can endure the acute stages in private and where food can be poked in to him with a stick." -- Robert A. Heinlein (1907-1988)

And in pondering, I thought of another that should be shared, on the subject of writing;

"Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private, and wash your hands afterwards." -- Robert A. Heinlein (1907-1988)

There are others from RAH that are applicable in many, many circumstances, but these came to mind because I was thinking about the act and practice of writing for the consumption of others. And they are all too apt in these days of prolific blogging, and ease of spreading said writings. Especially in certain specific cases that I've run across in my time surfing the blogosphere.

Hey, folks. Yeah, you guys, all of you who can't seem to write about anything but being nasty for no apparent reason other than being nasty, and can't even seem to make said nastiness entertaining for the rest of us, or who post to a public forum without taking the time to make their post anything more than incomprehensible gibberish. You're taking up valuable bandwidth that other people could use. Take a break, learn to spell, basic sentence structure, all of that jazz, take a creative writing class or two, then come back and try again.

Otherwise, stop polluting my internet!

kthxbye!

Disclaimer: I know that I play fast and loose with the rules of writing. However, I do have a nodding acquaintance with them. I'm speaking of the people who can't be bothered to stop, take a breath, and re-read what they've written, to realize that it makes no sense whatsoever. Pure Gibberish! This has no bearing on anyone who has been mentioned in this blog, or will be mentioned in this blog in the future, unless otherwise stated. Thank you for your time.

My Oldest Friend

Ya'll can thank my associational memory for this one. Mentioning the fact that I'm horse nuts in my previous post got me thinking about my horsey times, which brought to mind my oldest friend, as it always does.

You see, my oldest friend is... was.... a horse. I still have trouble sometimes remembering that we lost him this last winter, I keep expecting to see the old man coming up for a treat and his ration of pets and attention.

Growing up, my family raised cattle. I was still tiny when the patriarchal side of the family got out of the beef industry, but I can remember moving cattle on horseback. I was just big enough to hold onto the horn in front of whichever parent drew the short straw and squeal in delight as they took off after a rogue. As a side effect of raising cattle, and because gangly colts are some of the cutest critters to walk the planet, they raised horses. American Quarter Horses, to be exact, of exalted bloodlines, and patient personalities.

One of the best we ever had, in my memory and anyone else's, was Cutter. Cutter was, technically, Hygro Cutter Sauce, but he was always just Cutter to me. He was born in the early '70s, saddle trained, and started on cutting by one of the best trainers in the land, and finished out by my father, after an afternoon chat aided by some copenhagen and a nice breeze. The trainer, while he still had him, won three minor futurities, sitting square in the middle of one of the smallest cutting horses he'd ever trained. Watching this horse work a herd of cows, and he did it mostly on his own, was as beautiful as any Mozart symphony, or Rembrandt painting in the world. He was a short little sorrel, with a blaze down his face and white socks, and a mane and tail that were perpetually ratted, no matter how I tried to keep them flowing.

When I say he worked mostly on his own, I mean, he'd wait for you to tell him which critter you wanted, and then go to work. When in the pasture, he would amuse himself by cutting the calves off of their mommas and taking them off to play for a while.

By the time I came on the scene, Cutter was a solid member of the family, and had already proven his patience and skill with children. He would not allow a child to fall of his back, ever. Unless there was a person standing there with a firm grip on the kid, he'd hurt himself getting well under the munchkin, rather than let them slide off.

This, of course, made him the perfect horse to teach my brother and I (mostly me) to ride. Of course, once I had a few basic skills, enough to stick my butt to the leather, he moved on to some more difficult lessons.

Like be careful when you ask a cutting horse to turn, or he might just spin you right off. It took many years before the ol' boy was willing to let me take my lumps, and he never entirely stopped treating me like one of his "kids," but he spit me out of my saddle a couple of times, when he thought I was getting too big for my britches.

He was my babysitter as a child, watching over me when I would toddle away from my mothers side and go romping in the horse pasture. He was my confidant, patiently listening to the secrets I cared to whisper into his ear and nodding sagely as I told him of the resolution to some conflict. He was my teacher, instilling in me the love and respect of our equine friends that I carry with me today. He was my friend, sharing with me fiery sunsets out in the pasture, one arm over his neck and leaning on each other. When all else had failed me, five minutes in his company could remove the greatest stresses, and calm the roiling seas of my emotions and mind.

Later in his life, he became more and more arthritic. Our long rambling exploratory rides became limited to him insisting on taking me for a ride in the pasture, meandering around a bit as he showed me the best of the juicy grasses, and then depositing me back where he'd picked me up when he was ready, all sans saddle, bridle, or even halter. The last time we went on a real trail ride, we came upon some cattle in the canyons, and I saw him perk up, felt his muscles tense, just waiting for the signal to go get 'em.

That poor old horse's whole body drooped when I kneed him on past the placidly grazing cattle.

Of course, that meant he had to prove that he still had the same turn on a dime and give you five cents change skills that he'd had in his youth, as I discovered later in the ride, when I asked for a sharp right and got one much sharper than I'd intended.

We spent five minutes checking his legs, and another twenty with his girth loosened and me on the ground, the old sorrel giving me the hairy eyeball the whole time for insisting that he not strain himself.

The more arthritic he got, the less we rode. The less we rode, the thinner the old man got. The rough winter this year was just too much for him, and sometime during the blizzards he laid down and let the snow cover him.

I cried when we found him.

The tradition lives, although we lost all our breeding stock in my grandmother's divorce. While at the horse sale, a couple of months ago, looking for a new horse to take to college with me, we found his sister. Or, she might as well be his sister. She pranced into the sale ring with the same "look at me!" attitude he'd always shown in parades, has the same bloodlines, similar coloring and markings, and even has "Cutter's" in her registered name. My grandmother cried, and I bid, and we got her. Her use name is now Etta, she's two years old and well worked with. Next summer, I'll begin training her.

No horse will ever replace the Old Man in my heart, but with any luck I'll do justice to the memory of the partnership he shared with me and my family.

P.S. My grandmother carries around more pictures of her horse than she does of me. No wonder my priorities, when it comes to my equine friends, are skewed.

Wow

I have fans!

I've gotten more response than I honestly expected, already! I really appreciate everyone reading my little things, and I really *really* appreciate all the praise they've received!

I don't know what to say, I figured I might get a laugh here and there, and maybe give people a peek into my dual work life of farming and ranching, and construction, and maybe a teensy little look at my experience with horses (You'll figure this one out... I'm a horse nut) and I've gotten so much response already, I'm just flabbergasted.

Once again, thank you all for reading and commenting. I'll try to live up to your expectations!


...... Crap. I need to take a notebook on the tractor with me now......

"You can't tell me that!"

Pondering on my road construction experience, I thought of one instance that has managed, I am told, to turn me into an amusing anecdote shared with classes at the Traffic Control Supervisor certification program.

We were working on US 50, headed east from Lamar (if you drive over that road in the future, think of me- I've walked every inch of that sucker from main street to about seven miles out of town, and I've done it several times) doing a recycle.

Now, recycling roads is an interesting concept, and it creates a lot less waste. What they do is, they bring in a big "train" of equipment, about five hundred feet long. The first two trucks are "burners," they've got ginormous propane tanks on top, and hanging underneath are the worlds fastest pig cookers. They heat the asphalt thats already there to a proper temperature to slightly liquefy the oils in the mixture that hold it all together. The next piece is a roto-mill of a smaller type than we usually see, that is attached to another truck. It grinds up the first inch or two of asphalt, and then lays it into a neat windrow in the middle of the lane. After this comes a semi full of NEW asphalt. Then the paver, which picks up the old asphalt, mixes it with a little of the new asphalt from the truck, and lays it all down, in a nice shiny new road. As I said, this whole processional is about five hundred feet long, and it moves slow enough that the semi driver is instructed to place his truck in neutral and let the paver push him along. Thanks to the sheer girth of all of this equipment, and the fact that there are a lot of workers around a lot of really noisy machinery, a flagger stays with the train and slows people down going by the whole shebang.

On this particular day, I was that flagger. The fact that traffic is coming from two directions means that I had to walk to each end of the train, so that the traffic would see my slow sign BEFORE they passed the paving operations at a bazillion miles an hour. Trust me, when you're the one standing on that yellow line, trying to slow people down, forty five is NOT slow enough.

In one line, coming from the front of the train, we had a bright one that wanted to go sixty five. He was in the middle and I can only assume that the other end had said they didn't have traffic, because the gap was too large for Mr Gofast to have been lagging back.

I tend to walk a ways in front of whatever it is I'm "guarding" for the simple fact that its easier to be seen that way, and I had walked maybe a hundred feet in front of the first burner truck. I saw the speed demon coming, and waved my slow sign a bit. Hmm, must not see me. I hang the sign out into the lane he's driving in (a surefire way to get the attention of the tunnel vision struck) and he starts slowing down. I pull the sign back, and he speeds up. Lather, Rinse, Repeat.

I finally get fed up with it and figure that he doesn't understand the dangers of this place, radio that I'm going to stop one of the cars and ask him to go by the paver slowly, and step out into the lane, flipping my sign to "Stop."

The guy stops, rolls down his window, and the first word out of his mouth is "WHAT?!?"

"Sir, I'm going to need you to go about twenty five miles an hour past our paver, as you can see we have a lot of workers down here, and they can't hear much next to that noisy equipment."

"You can't tell me that!"

"Sir, I can tell you that, its for your safety and that of our crew members, now, once you're past the paver you can speed up to-"

"YOU can't tell me that! You aren't a cop, you aren't my mother, and you cannot tell me how fast to drive!"

"Sir, I may not be a cop but I AM traffic control, and that means that yes, I can tell you how fast to drive, while you are in the construction zone. Aside from that you were driving faster than the posted speed limit of forty five to begin with. Now, I need you to drive at about twenty five miles an-"

"NO!"

This is about the point where I started losing my temper. He had other people behind him that were being held up, he was being flat out obnoxious, and that petulant "no" kicked my switch from "polite and professional" to "oh HELL no" in a heart beat. Then he added to it.

"I'm going to call CDOT and report you!"

"You want to use my phone? Both of the engineers on this job are on speed dial.. actually, there's one of them there, would you like me to call him over for you?"

"I'm going to call your boss and complain!"

"Again, would you like to use my phone? Or were you talking about my immediate supervisor here on site? I can get her if you like,"

"You're going to lose your job for this!!"

"Listen, buddy. Look around you. You see all these vests and hardhats? Anyone out here in a vest and a hardhat is Jesus, and can tell you to do whatever the hell they like as long as it concerns traffic and safety. Me? I'm god. Now you have two choices at this point, you can drive through MY site in an orderly and safe manner or you can pull your happy ass right over there on the shoulder and SIT THERE until the state patrol shows up. Did you not notice the damn signs as you were coming in that stated that fines are doubled? Not to mention the fact that if you give him the same shitty attitude you've given me, you're likely to get slapped with reckless endangerment and reckless driving on top of the speeding violation. If you run me, sir, I will get your license plate number and I WILL report you to the state patrol, and you WILL be stopped for it, wherever they find you."

I had seen him tense at the mention of the cops, and I figured he was preparing to run for it. He didn't, after he realized I was serious about turning him in.

"Now are you going to be a good boy and go through my site in a safe and proper manner or would you like to have this discussion with the nice officers?"

He went past the paver at twenty five, and then floored it on out of the site.

A couple of minutes later I hear on the radio: "Farmgirl, have you been cussing at traffic?"

"Yes, but he deserved it."

Apparently one of the crew members had run into my supervisor elsewhere on site, and related the story, as related to him by the driver of the first burner truck, which caught up with me in time for the cussing to start. I'm still not sure how he managed to hear what I was saying, but it was pretty much word for word, so I suppose I might have been a little loud.

I was also reported to have grown three feet in height, sprouted coarse dark hair all over my body, and large curving horns.

This is my legacy to traffic control.

Oy.