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Horsegirl Meets TractorJune 09, 2006 Today I learned to drive the tractor. I hadn't driven a tractor since high school and that was a no-frills Ford workhorse used to pull the hay baler and the manure spreader and (eventually) a rake and a crimper. This is a fancy (neither you nor I would ever call it frilly) Kubota diesel with a bucket on the front and a hitch on the back. It was not love at first sight. Backing out of the (brand new, gorgeous post-and-beam) boat barn, I turned too soon and the bucket whacked the edge of the door jamb. Woops. Ginny was clearly having doubts about entrusting the tractor to a rank beginner. She did a quick repair on the jamb. Her husband, whose baby the boat barn is, is crewing on a boat that's currently on the far side of the Azores. He probably doesn't read this blog but when he gets back he probably will notice the dent in the channel that the overhead door travels in. The overhead door glides up and down the way it's supposed to, but the dent is definitely there. Moral of story: If your spatial instincts have been developed with relatively small vehicles, they probably won't apply to a big tractor with a bucket on the front. The immediate project was to drag the ring, which smooths out the pockmarks and prevents tracks from developing around the perimeter and at either end, where sometimes we get a little drill-happy with our 20-meter circles. I now know how to make the bucket go up and down and tip forwards and backwards, and how to make the hitch on the back go up and down. I can go forward and backward and set and release the emergency brake. I can also attach the drag to the bucket, lift it up, drive it into the ring, put it down, detach it, reattach it to the hitch on back, and drive around and around the ring until the entire surface is dragged. Rhodry had an unerring instinct for lying down in the lane I was about to drag. (He does the same thing when I'm sweeping the barn, and now that you mention it the drag is sort of like a broom.) The tractor is very loud, but I am even louder, and Rhodry is not as deaf as he sometimes pretends. The rain was coming down harder and harder while I drove round and round; when I got done I was drenched because my filthy yellow rain slicker was in the truck. Nevertheless I felt quite accomplished because I dragged the ring, and the boat barn, the horse barn, the fence around the ring, and the mirrors at one end are still standing. Maybe I have embarked on a new phase of diesel dykery. I drove home by way of Oak Bluffs, where I parked near the gazebo and walked over to Reliable for a few groceries. All ready to pull out, I put my foot on the brake. Squish. It went all the way to the floor. Not good. The rest of the way home I had minimal braking power, and the brake warning light came on when I was halfway up Skiff Ave. I reached my mechanic just before closing time and now have an appointment for first thing Monday. Good thing I stopped at Our Market because it's hard to carry three six-packs on a bicycle. I'm not going to look at today's horoscope. It probably says not to get behind the wheel of any motor vehicle.
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