Holy Cow Tractor Pulling Team

Sunday, July 09, 2006

Arcola, IN
It was odd paying to get in a tractor pull, but I wanted to check out Arcola for their first year back with the NTPA. Friday night had 4 classes, Minis, SF, Mods, and FWD. I missed the Minis because we just couldn't get there in time. I am not a Super Farm fan, but it did seem the track was pulling right and there was something odd going on at the starting line. The first few mods had a really rough go of it. There was a lot of bouncing out of the hole and the most drivers were on the brakes frequently. Brad Barga made a great, straight, smooth pass and sat in the lead at 274. I thought they might win it if the other drivers couldn't figure out a setup to make this track work. But, as the night went on, the track got better and better. Bob Jostock made an outstanding pass, but was just shy of Don Deans winning run. The FWD trucks all ran well, but the track continued to get better and a late draw in the class was an advantage. Dave Closser made an outstanding run and won that class.

Night two on Saturday night was similar. This time it was Mini's, Super Stocks, Mods, and TWDs. The Mini class was odd, it seemed the tractors either got a hold of the track and did really well, or just sat and spun and did really poor. There really was no middle of the pack. About 1/2 of the tractors finished between 280 and 300 and the other half were in the 150-200 range. The one thing I noticed was that the sled was and old-school sled with out all the "tricks" than the modern sleds, like the normal Grand National Ironboy, have. Most modern sleds have pans that can be lifted up, with features on the bottom of the pan to stop the tractors. The advantage is that the sled is light, so it can be started easily and the tractors can run fast. Then, at the big end of the track, the pan is dropped and the tractors are stopped quickly. This sled started heavy and got heavier as the pull went on. I know there are two tires used on the Minis, Cepek and Firestone. I don't know how that played it to it. Also, as with the night before, the starting line seemed inconsistent. Anyway, it was a good, safe class with Larry Koester emerging on top.

Next was the diesel supers. Again, a good class. Tom Kasting on Hoosier Deere made an outstanding pass. I know they did a lot of work a year ago and had problems getting it to run. This was the first time I have seem this tractor run well. It is a bitch getting new changes dialed in. I am glad to see they are through that phase. The "surprise" was Mark Pessig from Wisconsin that through 2000 lbs on his LSS and just embarrassed the competition. Three tractor made the pull-off, Pessig, Kasting, and Keith Middleton on Deere and Company. Neither Pessig not Kasting could come back in the pull off, so technically Middleton won, but IMHO, Pessig won that pull hands down.

The mod class went much smoother than the night before, but most tractors still had issues at the starting line. Jostock made an outstanding pass and landed a spot in the pull off with Don Deane. In the pulloff, Jostock made another great pass, and Deane took second my a few feet.

The sled in the TWD class was too light with 7 of the 10 competitors crossing 310'. Richard Haffners son was driving Hoosier Thunder and had the prettiest pass in the pull off and sat in the lead. Then Trevor Cox in Dr Hook came to the line. The truck bucked and bounced at the starting line and never could keep the nose in the air, but he was able to get by Haffner to win the class. I was not a pretty pass, especially for Cox, but it got the job done.

One other bit of excitement happened just behind the bleachers where we were sitting. Richard Haffner was getting his tow vehicle in position to tow the Hoosier Thunder back to the hauler just and Larry Koester was leaving. I didn't see what happened, but Richard ended up driving hi gator into the side of Koesters Bus twice, leaving a dent in the generator door and scratches on both vehicles. I don't know if Koester swung a little wide and clipped the ATV, of if Richard meant to back up, but ended up driving forward. But at that point the two vehicles got tangled together, unbeknownst to Koester, and while Richard scrambled to get free, he hit them a second time. No one hurt thankfully. I know they talked for bit and seemed to be exchanging info. I am pretty sure that the insurance that comes with a pulling license covers all accidents on the grounds, so hopefully both gentleman filed incident reports with NTPA.

New Job
I had worked at BTI since December of 2003 as a Systems Engineer and a Software Engineer. Starting last summer personality conflicts between the two partners became apparent to the employees. I also experienced conflict with one of the partners when I expressed dissatisfaction I had in special treatment his girlfriend, the accountant, was receiving. As tension between parters increased, decisions were made to boost egos, and the employees were being threatened with not getting a paycheck due to lack of payroll funds, it became a hostile work environment.

I absolutely loved my job and the people I worked with made up the best engineering team I have ever worked with. But, when the director of business management and one of the partners resigned, I decided that stress of hostile environment was not worth it, so I left as well.

For now, I need a break from engineering just to de-stress. I have taken a Foreman position with the excavator that did the drainage work on my house. I am not sure what the future holds, but for now I am enjoying the low-stress job of running heavy equipment and laying drain tile.

Redneck Motorcycle.
No, this is not mine. A fellow puller shared this with me and I just had to post it.

Drainage Project Complete
When the rains stopped, I noticed a lot of standing water in the fields. I went over an checked the tile in which we had planned to run my water and found the water level to be within about 25" of the grass. What this means is that if we hook in to this tile, the fields will flowing water IN to my basement, which obviously is not good. I looked at the tile and it is working fine, to problem is that the requirements for farm drainage are much less than for residential drainage. Time for Plan B

We suspected that the original tile is plugged somewhere in our cluster of houses and that remaining run of the tile into the open county ditch is fine. We obtained permission to do exploratory digging from the land owner and the highway department. We found that indeed the tile was is good shape down stream of the neighborhood.

The next step is to obtain permission from the county commissioners. The plan is to run a tile down the highway right-of-way from in from of my house down the road across two other neighbors front yards and tee into the existing tile. The first step was to the county surveyor. There we were informed that, while the tile used to be a county tile, it has since been abandoned. So, there will be no issue teeing into it since it is technically without owner. The last step is to get permission from the county commissioners. What we are doing is putting a private drain tile on county property. The only concern that the commissioners have is, at some time in the future, if the tile breaks, that the county has on record that they are not responsible to fix it. Again, there were no objections and that approval went without a hitch.

The only real problem we had through this process is with out neighbor. He has never talked directly to us, instead choosing to voice his concerns to is free UAW lawyer. He also refused to talk to the excavator, referring him to his lawyer. We have found out that he is planning on suing us, but we don't know for what. But more on him later.

So, the digging went well. In an effort to same me some money, I agreed to help the excavator with manual labor, saving me the cost of hiring a laborer. The ditching went smooth, but slow because of all of the obstacles we encountered, utilities, plants, septic, etc. However, when the job was done, our sump pump stopped dripping and barely runs and the fix seemed to be a complete success. The only problem is that about 1/2 of our yard got tore up and has no grass, and can't be fixed until the dirt has a chance to settle.

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