Another week closer to spring, another hoar frost rain coming around Aug. 22. A fearless forecast or a wild guess? Write it down, we will see. The days are noticeably longer and the temperature outside has been better. No doubt we will see some ugly weather before spring but I can live with this stuff until the real spring arrives. Thanks, Big Guy!
On the home front, we are getting organized to start changing oil for spring. I have a young guy (17) here who came and wanted to be a "weekend warrior." Weekend warrior is a phrase I coined because I always had high school students work for me on weekends. They do all the SLOJs. Every farm has them. My friend Lorne Topley invented the SLOJ phrase and it means "shitty little odd jobs." This kid's cousin worked for me for four years in total, starting as a weekend warrior. Most of these teenagers know almost nothing, but he is a willing worker and has the oil changed on my 7.3L environmental polluter and he is currently working on taking the starter off. He is tall and slim and fits under the truck well, and has also learned to use my homemade slippery slider and scoot around like anything. The cursed metric is really messing him up, because some bolts are metric and some are Canadian. The ones on the starter are metric. As long as he stays and is willing to learn he will turn out fine. We have negotiated Sunday off as he wants to hang out with his friends before going back to school after this February break. That is fine with me.
I see the terminal at Marshall seems to be getting about a trainload of cars per week. This is good, as people will get to deliver their wheat, I hope. I still think that a convoy of super-Bs delivering to the coast is a solution that needs to be looked into. In the past, I have sent two super-Bs to Vancouver and it cost only a few cents more than the freight that is charged by the railroads. The trucks came, loaded on a Sunday and were in Vancouver Monday morning. There were two drivers in each truck and they never stopped. This could be done again, but the grain companies would need to agree to pay more there than they are here. There are currently 50 ships waiting in Vancouver harbour. This is past ridiculous and right into "redonkulous!" The solution could be so simple.
The Olympics in Sochi will be over by the time you read this column. It has been good for Canada since we have won a lot of medals but not without controversy. The first we heard was the conspiracy between the Russians and the Americans to fix the figure skating and this conspiracy goes back to the Olympics in Vancouver with France and Russia about who would win the gold. Apparently the French female judge would signal with her feet somehow at what the Russian judge would give as a score. This time when the conspiracy theory surfaced the Olympic officials were quick to deny the fact and said that if anybody had evidence to bring the information forward. United States won gold in the pairs over Canada, although the Canadians skated a flawless, more complicated routine. How could that happen? Conspiracy theory, eh?
The Russians were accused of turning up the heat on the slide on the two-man bobsleds after Norway and Russia had made their slide. That made the sleds go slower. The Austrians were next and their slide was a half a second slower than what the Russians and Norwegians did. So was everyone else. Norway and Russia finished first and second. Olympic officials denied anything was wrong. Conspiracy theory, eh?
Norway is not happy! Norway is very strong in skiing and they hardly got any medals in Sochi. They are blaming bad wax on their skis. Bad wax or sour grapes, eh?
A German cross-country skier is under suspicion that she/he/it may have used some performance enhancement. She created the suspicion when she was standing up to give her urine test. As my uncle Harold used to say, "Ooooh, boy!"
The Jamaican bobsled team is happy. They had to canvass all the bars in Jamaica to get enough money to get themselves and their sled to Sochi. After a wild ride down and bumping the sides of the slides frequently they were really happy to come in at 27 place. They were heard to say as they took their slide off the run, shaking their heads, "Not like Jamaica, mon!"
The Russians stored up huge warehouses of snow in case the weather turned mild. The weather in Sochi has been warmer there than in Florida and of course the runs had problems keeping the snow. The problem is the snow they saved has some sand and dirt in it and was not much good for anything. A Canadian company has a snowmaking machine in Sochi. They had two machines running and it appeared they could make a tandem load of snow every 20 minutes. It was running steady! When the reporters quizzed the Russian officials about the sand in their snow and the need for the Canadian snow machine, the Russian officials vehemently denied that they had any problem with their snow and stated they didn't need help from anyone. One official was really sore about the question. Well okay, but the machines were caught making snow on television. Apparently the big bears don't take kindly to that question and it was from a woman, too! That kind of thing is not supposed to happen in Russia!
Joke of the week from Chris Koch: There was an aspiring painter who was displaying some of his paintings at a local art gallery. After two weeks he goes to the gallery to see if any of his paintings were sold. The gallery owner tells him, "Well, I have good news and bad news." The young painter said, "Give me the good news first." The galley owner said, "Someone came to the gallery last week inquiring about your paintings, asking if they would be more valuable if the artist passes away? And I told him that yes, they would be more valuable. And the fellow bought all 15 of your paintings!" "Well, that's wonderful, what is the bad news?" The gallery owner cleared his throat nervously and replied, "The bad news is that the guy that bought all your paintings was your doctor!"
