Funny pic/gif thread...

Vocals by Rover....

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ShootingArts said:
One of my earliest memories is of watching a crop duster beside our farm. He was flying between the barb wire fence and the electric wires to dust a field. In those days of flying the old Waco bi-planes and short poles there was damned little clearance between wheels or top of plane and wire.

Always fascinated by them, never gave it a try! Met an old boy named Unk, they had pulled his ticket due to a bad heart. He told tales of the new hotrod dusters. Those things look more like a fighter than a crop duster. He said the farmer would watch, wanting the poison put in low and slow to get good coverage. Unk did this until the farmer went to lunch, then 200mph passes!

My mom came over one day about this time and I mentioned I thought I would take up crop dusting. She was a bit apprehensive. "When?" I told her I had to get a pilot's license, a couple years experience, and about $50,000 for a decent used plane. "Oh, I thought you meant right now!" That wasn't an unreasonable fear, that is how I took up driving an eighteen wheeler and a stock car, most things I did. Buy or build what I wanted and go. A bit more involved to fly and I never got around to it.

Hu
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First time I ever drove a semi was in 1995 when I went on a trip with my dad to the east coast (PA) from Nebraska then back up through Minnesota and back down to Nebraska. Somewhere in MN about 1AM we're driving down the interstate and he says "Wanna drive", well duh...it was a brand new (as in less than 100K on it) 379 Pete with a 500HP CAT and double overdrive 18sp. He slipped out of the seat and I took over and started driving. About an hour into it he decides he's taking a nap and crawls in the back to sleep, well, about an hour after that I'm headed down the road and I see a scale house and it was open - and it was less than a 1/2 mile away - I had never shifted a big truck (some class B stuff though) so I yell at my dad and tell him the scale is open. Within 30 seconds he was out of bed (in his underwear no less) and driving and I was in the passenger seat. His hair was still sticking up and he was still half asleep as we rolled through the scale and just waived.

Got back up to speed and he went back to bed and I drove until the sun came up ;)

Good times...

I got my CDL 6 months later and ultimately got a local driving job that allowed me to take his truck on runs a couple of times a month.
 
EDIT: This was a reply to Chili that got split somehow.

I drove an hour to work, climbed iron in a petro-chem plant for ten hours, the hour back home, and climbed into my rig to make a quick run to Hollis OK to pick up a load of alfalfa, 745 miles each way. My wife wanted to ride so off we go. Get to Hollis, only a twelve year old boy to help load hay. Had to back almost six hundred feet between thirty foot walls of hay in the co-op barn and the farmer didn't have a key to the doors next to his hay. 580 bales later back on the road! I am more than a little whipped by now so I decided it was time to let my tiny wife try her hand at driving an eighteen wheeler. Technically not an interstate but a divided four lane. My cabover had a thirteen speed roadranger in it, an easy tranny to drive. I stopped on a downhill and explained that there was a couple hundred miles of nothing ahead, just let off the brakes and nudge it in gear when it started rolling and no clutch was needed to shift gears. It took a lot of effort and a long time for her to get the clutch pushed in.

I got her rolling and climbed into the sleeper for a couple hours sleep. I stretched out and felt like I was falling down a hole. Suddenly, "HU, HU, HU, HU, HU!!! I had overlooked one little detail, Wichita Falls, Texas. Nine redlights a short city block apart before the bypass was built. "Just get it stopped the first time and I'll take over." So much for sleep, she would never consider getting behind the wheel again, ever! With only a three day weekend to get home, rest, and go back to my regular job Monday I took a fifteen minute nap somewhere the other side of Wichita Falls in North Texas and took the truck straight home.

Not my worst trip, I topped a hill on a two lane and found a four vessel cement pumper across both lanes and shoulders. A wooden shack not far from the ditch and I knew if I plowed through it at four in the morning there would almost certainly be people killed, including children. I also knew I was almost certain to jackknife trying to hold another load of hay in the ditch. Had it down to about twenty miles an hour when I picked my spot and went off the road. Jackknifed as expected and ended up greasy side up. Not sure hauling hay was fun but it was inneresting!

Hu
 
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