Over the Fields We Go

Anne's folks have this great gas driven golf cart we use to bomb all over the 80 acres, especially since Anne is easily tired after her pneumonia.

Now, it's seen a few years, and tends to be a bit mule-like in behavior. The past week has seen it standing out in the fields a few times overnight, after refusing to go any farther.

Anne's dad and I worked on it, and we managed to find and fix a fault in the wiring, so the motor no longer just dies on us, but the choke still seems to be having trouble. Typically, it will crawl along at a few feet a minute, then suddenly roar and bound ahead at full speed for 10 or 20 seconds, before slowing down again, only to repeat the process. We tend to leap frog our way across the fields, which is fine because we aren't in any hurry.

Now, if you drive with one hand down under the seat and fiddle with the choke as you go, you can sometimes get it to go full speed, as long as you carefully adjust the choke as you go. Let go of it, and it will die out again.

Yesterday was a blistering hot Kansas summer day; the temperature up about 17 million degrees. They said it on the news, I don't remember if it was Celsius or Fahrenheit - probably whichever one was hotter. And Anne wanted to go for a ride to see the back forty.

That's a long way for a golf kart that creeps - across the front of the acreage to the abandoned road, up the hill and along the road to where it drops down past the abandoned quarry, over the gravel flats past the explosives, through a thick batch of scrubby brush, and out onto the back pasture.

Plus it was a million billion degrees out.

So.

Anne stocked us up with a couple of glasses of diet coke and ice, which she held one in each hand as we started jouncing out across the field.

Jouncing very slowly at first, as I fiddled with the choke as we crawled. Occasionally we'd burst into speed, and she'd struggle to keeps the coke's from spilling, while the five dogs swirled around us excitedly and tried to fling themselves under our wheels.

What is that with dogs? They can run behind us, beside us, or well out in front. but instead they try to run out just in front of the golf kart, and then stop. Seriously, what are they thinking? What is it in the canine mind that says "Look, a large massive object moving at high speed. I think I'll run out in front of it, then stop and look around for a while?"

The dogs are panting madly, and as we slowly lurch across the fields, we finish off one glass of coke, apparently spilling some onto me at one point. I don't remember this, but Anne does. It figures in what comes later.

As the motor warms up I'm able to fiddle with it and get longer bursts of speed. As we head down the hill past the quarry, it hits a sweet spot and the motor just purrs, moving us at full speed, the dogs frantically trying to keep up, and no longer able to treat us like a juggernaut. But juggernaut we are, and we blister across the baked gravel meadow and hurtle towards the explosives as Anne jostles beside me, and instead of holding on to the side bar, uses that hand to hold the coke out and away so it doesn't spill on me.

We're making good time, and I don't have to steer around the dogs, so it's going well, even though I'm hunched over hanging on to the the choke pull switch. However, we are rapidly running out of gravel and heading towards some thigh high scrubby grasses.

I've been here before, on foot, and I try to remember if there is anything here that could be troublesome. I take us down an overgrown patch of gravel and through the thinnest section of tall grass, maybe thirty or forty feet of it before it opens up into pasture. I'm going full speed, and reluctant to slow down, because who knows when I'll get it zipping along like this again?

We blast through the tall grass, blades whipping to one side and crunching over the stalks and hurtle through to the open pasture beyond.

Well, almost.

Turns out there was a little ridge hidden in the grass. We bounced over that, arms and legs flying, barely managing to hold on.

Ah.

Then we hit the big ridge.

We slammed into that ridge of overgrown gravel, and suddenly Anne seemed to lean forward, and stretch out over the grass, hovering as it were.

This seemed odd to me, as we lurched and pitched over, and Anne then left the golf cart entirely and sailed out into the tall grass.

Alarmed, I could only think of one thing.

I was going to have to stop.

Actually, I'd already stopped, the kart had hung itself up on the ridge. In fact, the kart and I stopped, while Anne had neglected to match our pace, and now rolled over and over in the tall grass, still holding the glass of coke.

She came to rest, covered wonderfully in burrs and dried plant pieces, the dogs bounding excitedly around her for a moment, then trying to climb onto the seat she had just vacated. Heartless opportunists, they hate to run when they can ride, and they were quite happy with the exchange of places they felt she had just offered.

I coaxed the kart the few feet forward it needed to go to reach the pasture, figuring on getting the dogs out of the burrs, and saving us (ie., Anne) additional hours of grooming time later.

Sure, a more gallant man might have let Anne back on the kart, but she was rather covered with burrs, and who wants burrs on them?

She staggered to her feet, on;y moderately injured, and together we plucked the burrs off her, as she proudly handed me the glass.

Still had coke in it.