“Good Morning...today you are going to drive THIS!....

“Uhhhhhhhhh.....”

“Ummmmmm....”

“Really?...”

“Are you FOR REAL for real??”

Yes.

This morning Wayne woke me up and said “Em, today is one of those mornings that we need you to help us shift the gear”. I knew when I got there that they were going to teach me to drive various things around the farm, so that I can assist them during harvest. I was totally prepared to drive the Ute...”well actually that one was thrown on me..but I am pretty much a pro now :) quad, a tractor...but I did NOT think that I would be driving the Ute puling this MASSIVE EXPENSIVE PEICE OF FARM EQUIPMENT! Haha. It's called and ogger and its what they use to take the wheat out of the trucks. Seriously..it's about 40 feet long and hangs out about 10 feet on each side. I honestly thought it was a fucking joke...this thing was huggggeee (that's what she said...literally...it's what I said)

Wayne gave me a rundown on all of the things that I needed to do;

“Ok, so the main thing is when you are turning. If you are turning Right you need to go far left and THEN turn right..so that the wheels don't go off the road”.

My next question:

“um....how much is this thing worth?”

“Well about $300,000”

“Oh right....um....ok”

Sweet. Jesus.

Anyways Wayne is a really good at explaining things. He went over all the things I needed to know, and we did a test run around the yard. I also have a 2-way radio in the Ute, so if anything went wrong I could contact him right away, This made me feel much better...well kinda.

To be honest this was a lot like driving the manual Ute for the first time. I didn't panic. I didn't freak out (out loud..just a wee bit in my head). I tried not to really think about it. If Wayne trusted me and thought I could do this, then I can do this.

He was following me in a tractor pulling a wheat bin. I am not kidding when I say we drove 30kms the whole way, and it took us 2.5 hours to get there. Haha. Every time a turn came up Wayne would call me on the 2-way and tell me which way we were turning. Once we got there I felt a sense of accomplishment! As if I drove that thing! Haha. I was pretty proud of myself that I did that.

Another lesson learned, Most times I probably would have said “oh, no way I can't do that” before I even gave myself a chance. I was given all the tools to do it, and I knew that if there was an issue I could just call Wayne, so that made me feel comfortable. Moral of the story..just say Yes.