Changing Gears

At one of our bookclubs, we had the rare privilege of hosting the author of our selection that month, John Moore.  He's a rancher that writes or a writer that ranches....I'm not sure which.  Anyway, we asked him if ranching hindered his writing process and he explained that actually he did most of his writing horseback, in his head, hurrying home after the work was done to get it down on paper.

I have to say I can completely relate to this.  I write blog posts by the bucketful when I ride my 4-wheeler, moving cows. I write letters that never get sent. I change recipes and write cookbooks. I make "to-do" lists that are quite grandiose.  And I revisit memories, hitting the re-wind button in my brain; enjoying some and cringing at others, of course. 

The other day, when we were moving the yearlings...the coming twos....I recalled my first "ranch" date with the Farmer and the guys of Pluhar ranch. 

I grew up where we rode horses to gather cows and work, and my dad made fun of motorcycles and wheelers. I'd truly never sat on a 4 wheeler until I started dating the Farmer....golf carts, yes, but never a wheeler. And it had been some time since I'd moved cows at all.   

The guys were going to move yearlings from Grants, where our house now sits, to across the road and I guess they thought it couldn't hurt to let "the girl" come along.  I got a crash course (not literally) in riding my own 4-wheeler. It sounded something like this: "Here's the start button. Shift up with your foot like this, shift down with your foot like this, here's the brake, let's go."

 And they took off, going at what seemed to me to be 50 mph, but in reality was more like 25 mph.  Pluhars are great guys, but they don't baby girls along very much, so I finally figured out the shifting up thing and caught up.  Sort of.  By the time I was getting to cruising speed, they were shifting down to turn.  (How do I shift down?!!! Think, think, think. Think faster!)

I've told you about moving yearlings, how they are the hardest bunches of cows to manuver, because they are flighty and silly, like junior high girls.  Yeah.  And me on a wheeler.  I don't mind telling you that I was a little nervous.  But I really wanted to prove that I could do it, so I followed along and went where they told me, feeling like I'd tip over the wheeler on any little incline, fighting the gear thing the whole way.

Looking back, I give the guys huge credit for their patience and willingness to even let me go.  Or perhaps they just wanted something funny to watch for awhile. 

The one little instruction they neglected to impart was how to put the wheeler in reverse. 

On a horse, you pull back the reins and pivot.  It's pretty intuitive and quick and you don't even really think about it. 

On a wheeler, you have to shift all the stinking way back down to neutral, push down a little red button on the left handle by the brake and pull back, shift the gear down into reverse, THEN hit the gas to go flying backward after letting go of the brake you've been holding on the left-hand handle.  Who the heck is going to figure THAT out on their own?  Especially someone as mechanically impaired as me.

Pulling back on the handles does nothing. And believe me, I tried that.

I got a little heifer into a corner, and there we sat.....she didn't want to leave and I couldn't.  I couldn't go forward, I couldn't go backward, I couldn't turn.  She finally tossed her pretty little head and left me sitting there, MAD.  Mostly because I could hear at least two of the guys (one was the man I was dating) laughing. What I wouldn't have given for one of my Dad's horses right that moment....

Finally, after pulling himself together, the Farmer (risking life and limb) came over and showed me the complex system by which one puts a wheeler in reverse. Is that all? He politely backed my wheeler out of the corner and got me readjusted, headed the right direction.

I was finally able to rejoin the guys and the herd and follow them across the road to the next pasture. Vern very kindly told me he liked that I didn't get all excited when moving cows, waving my arms and hollering.  Well, yeah.  I was pretty much immobilized in the corner during most of the project.  But let me tell you, it was getting pretty close to the waving and yelling stage.....

I didn't realize at the time that it was a pretty big deal to go with the guys.  Pluhars have always had ample male help and sort of discouraged women around the cows, because as my father-in-law told the Farmer one time, "Cows just work harder with women in the corral."

But that's another story....