finance
The Burrito Cannonball – Last Among the Living – Car and Driver
December 19, 2011 | Author tamolaxu
Almost in the same place, parked on the shoulder, sits a red 1963 Impala that arrived in Tuxtla aboard a gleaming three-axle race trailer with two rooftop air conditioners and a kitchen. Owner Jerry Churchill, a trucking baron from Detroit, sits on its fender regarding the cell phone in his hand as if it were a dead iguana.
In corners, our half-century-old Ford leans heavily on its soft springs and swaggers down the straights. In the tighter hairpins, the oversize Michelins grind rust out of the rear wheel wells. In the third speed stage, we average 49.4 mph over a seven-mile section of twisting road. The lead car, Doug Mockett and Allan Baillie’s Turismo Mayor 1954 Oldsmobile 88, does it at 80.8 mph.
Still, we’re better off than some. A 1957 Mercedes-Benz 300SLS roadster from Germany lies crossways on the shoulder. It would be unrecognizable to its mother if it had one. Twisting skid marks point to where it rammed an embankment and bounced across the road. The four wheels want to roll toward different points of the compass.
Our flathead engine is overheating. It’s about 90 degrees outside, 110 in the cockpit, and 220 in the cylinder head—and climbing. The Ford can’t shed BTUs as fast as the V-8 is making them; we’re forced to slow down to 28 mph. A line forms behind us consisting of battered Datsuns, farm trucks, and old men on mopeds. We are becoming a parade float for the villages of interlocking-wood and corrugated-steel shanties.
Nine hours after the laughter has stopped, Oaxaca finally comes into view. The sun hangs low, and the police escort has retreated from the onslaught of rush hour. We are 73rd, last among the living but ahead of the six cars coming in on trailers.
The fiesta is already winding down, the race leaders already parked on their hotel verandas and well into their third round of El Tesoro tequila while their hired mechanics fuss over the cars.
It takes Paul two more hours to reach us with our Ford Excursion service truck and our luggage, by which time we can barely lift our forkfuls of the local delicacy, chapulines (fried grasshopper with chili powder), much less dig into the overheating problem.
Article source: http://www.caranddriver.com/features/03q2/the_burrito_cannonball-feature/last_among_the_living_page_9
Skid Steer Attachments Review: Bale Handler or Bale Spear
December 13, 2011 | Author tamolaxu
:: The skid steer loader is an old hand at farm life. For many decades, at harvest time in rural communities, a familiar scene rose out of the freshly shorn fields: a farmer with a baler is followed by a passel of teenagers, who are dutifully chucking and stacking the dusty bales into a flatbed farm vehicle. Those same teenagers would earn a bit more money de-tasseling corn stalks at the next farm down the road.
But there is always someone devising easier ways to do things. If indeed a grass, wheat, hay, or straw farmer needs to harvest, store, and transport his crops, he is going have to come to grips with just how versatile the skid steer machine can be on a farm of any size. And when choosing the most useful skid steer attachments for his machine, he will have to come to grips with the best way to grip his bales.
Is a bale handler going to be the best choice? Or will a bale spear work better? Bales of grasses, wheat, hay, straw, and other crops are staples in rural communities, and whether they are to be bought, sold, or used by a farmer, they need to be stacked, stored, moved around, and eventually eaten by the livestock. The Bale Handler is one of the simplest skid steer attachments available. It consists of nothing more than a giant hydraulic claw that can pinch any size or shape of bale. Using the boom of the skid steer, the operator then has the ability to lift or tote a bale wherever it needs to go.
With the ability to move, stack, lift, and transport round or rectangular bales up to 2400 pounds, bale handlers are strong enough to handle almost any bale. Many modern bales, in order to keep the material together, are wrapped in a plastic sheath before being transported. Because the wrapping material is the only thing that keeps the round bale intact, the bale handler has been specially designed to have no sharp edges. It is made with smooth surfaces all around, so that this skid steer attachment is able to manipulate wrapped bales without the risk of damage to the wrapper. The bale handler attachment is the kind of skid steer attachment that will assist in keeping barns and yards tidy and well-organized for years into the future.
The Bale Spear is an entirely different animal, and is truly one of the simplest skid steer attachments that is available on the market. It is made up of a simple pair of sharp fork tines for poking the bales. The bales can then be lifted and carried and put in a barn, trough, or into the back of a truck. Because of its nasty, sharp, pointy end, the bale spear is one of many skid steer attachments that should be operated with the utmost care. It too, is capable of stacking bales of any size with ease into a truck or barn, but is, by virtue of its design, more well-suited to round bales. The bale spear can impale several disks of crops (without contacting their wrappers) and move them anywhere the skid steer can go.
Which is best? As with many skid steer accessories, it depends on the job, and the type of bales that need to be moved. If a farmer finds that he or she produces bales of different kinds, then the bale handler makes more sense. It really is able to work effectively with any bale configuration. However, if a farmer is only going to work with round bales, then the bale spear is the best choice. It is simply designed to work with round bales, and can carry a formidable load.
No matter what shape your bales might be, let the skid steer (and the right attachment) help you handle them with care.
Source: http://www.submityourarticle.com/articles/Robert-Leib-7686/skid-steer-attachments-180658.php
Tags: