Here's just a quick update on my scattered recent doings and a little retrospective after hitting my six-month mark in Iowa.
The only trip for work I've had was a quick run up to a prototype in western Wisconsin in mid-July. Swinging through a farm technology show on the same trip was a possibility, but we had waited too long for parts. It had rained that week, so there wouldn't be any hay equipment demos anyway.
Work is going well, generally. I feel more or less useful, depending on the day. I've been doing some design work on new machines, designing a couple aftermarket kits for mowers already in production, scrapping a few no-longer-needed machines, and some cutting. One week when Eric and Stu were both gone, Henry, a Vermeer veteran of 43 years, and I scrapped two mowers. Temps happened to be over 100 all week, and 108 on Wednesday, so it was a rough one, yet I still spent more time out in the shop instead of in the office than was probably necessary. The cutting I've done has been little bits of third cutting alfalfa usually within a few miles of factory. The exception was a 50-acre CRP piece I cut out on Friday. It took almost two hours to road the tractor and mower to the field. It doesn't make much sense why I didn't just leave the mower there and let the owner cut it all, but I was told to cut it out. My map was out of date, so one fence I needed to use as a guide was gone and I was supposed to stay off one hill. I can remember one rougher field I've cut in the last ten years and that piece was so rough I cut about twenty acres and refused to go back in it again. This one had bone dry slues that were deep enough to bottom out the two-point arms on the mower hitch, was filled with gopher mounds, was just all around tough, steep ground. I got tired of hitting my head on the ceiling of the tractor going less than 3 mph. I love making hay, but I didn't envy Walker and Henry having to rake and bale that field.
I've been playing sand volleyball about once a week with some people I've met round and about town. Most of them are either Central College students or alums. It's been a good way to stretch my legs out a bit, and has surprisingly not gotten overly competitive despite the Olympics.
My twelve pepper plants have been going nuts. The six jalapenos are pretty spindly and only produced a handful of very weak peppers, but my chilis are the complete opposite; so far, I've picked 20 jalapenos and more than 90 pleasantly hot chilis, with lots more coming. I've been eating a lot of them, drying a few, and giving a good portion to neighbors and coworkers. Besides adding them to Mexican foods, eggs, and other conventional spice-appropriate foods, I've tried them in all kinds of sandwiches, most notably a ham, cheese, and raspberry jelly sandwich. I also liked my berry chili smoothie, but probably won't sell many people on it. I may have also accidentally gotten Hank the cat hooked on them. His curiosity got to him when I left some drying chilis out one night. Tyler found him batting one around, biting into it as cats do when they play, then getting angry and biting it more because of the heat. He must not have learned from his mistake because we often find him snitching peppers whenever he has a chance.
I went to a rodeo in southern Iowa a couple weekends ago with Jacob Beck, a product specialist intern from Oklahoma whose dad is also a dealer. It was a good time and fun to see, and I'll try to find one more before summer's over, even though Iowa isn't really cowboy country. A good buddy from MSU swung through the same weekend, heading back to Miles City after quitting a rather stressful year as a test engineer for Case New Holland in Pennsylvania. I had helped him get the job.
I've ventured up to Des Moines a couple times and have had some good times there. I haven't played in a session in about a month. That scene is quite different from my favorite Montana sessions, with several players using sheet music the whole night, and only one other young player. He is also the only person who can or does string together more than one tune. I get along with the young guy well, who plays fiddle, button box, and banjo, and we share many sentiments about session playing. I've learned several of the DM tunes, but tend to not play most of the tunes I know because I'd be the only one playing them and don't want to make it look like an open-mic. There is the peculiar aspect of one of the two venues being a Lebanese restaurant with a Russian ballerina-belly dancer doing her thing during the Irish session; it all seems like violent mishmash of cultures. Aside from all this, they don't start til 8:30 or 9, so I drive a total of two hours to downtown DM and back with a little more than an hour to play if I want to be in bed by a reasonable hour, which I should because they play on Tuesdays. I may go back occasionally, but for the most part it's not my cup of tea.
After six months, I'm seeming to settle in a bit more. The three other recent engineering hires and I get along pretty well and do stuff together often. I've gotten to know the bike mechanic I bought my bike from in May. He's from Mexico but has spent about half his life in the States, and a good fraction traveling. He was in the Middle East for some time, and came back to Iowa via southeast Asia and a tour of several American cities. He really reminds me of the kind of person Larry Lee would get along with very well. Tyler and I still get along well. I'm pretty friendly with a few neighbors, including some Indians who like to give me curry. Unfortunately, they aren't impressed with my chilis. One neighbor has family in Red Lodge and Lewistown, and we talk about Montana often. He has yet to notice I flipped over his Griz hitch cover.
