Ground finally dried out enough that I could move a little pile of top soil, let my son-in-law try his hand at the old D7. He grew up in Kent, England, then moved to London and worked there until my daughter brought him home with her. He's never seen a Cat up close, much less tried his hand. He's a little sloppy on grade, but run it he did. Living in London as he did, he never even bothered to get a driver's license until he got here. We have it pretty good in the USA.

Hi Jack

Wow, that was a good challenge to a newbie auto driver, but then again no fender benders with a cat, just run over anything in the way:D .

Glad to hear all made it home safetly from over "there". I hope the dream of the barn renovation goes as planned. My best to all.

Alan

Hi Al,

Good to hear from you. Yes, they made it safe and sound and two months later their freight did also.

Barn renovation went to the back burner for a while while we start up another restaurant over in Washington, but it'll happen.

Mark is enjoying the freedom of personal transportation like he never dreamed of. In UK motorists are taxed unbelievably in a government effort to deliberately keep them off the road. If you've seen the roads over there you could see why. They just havn't seen the need for roads like our great distances require.

I didn't mention that Mark liked the Cat immensly of course.

Jack

Thanks for sharing Jack, where are you located? Nice views. Love those Big Ole CATS. John

Hi J. in Wy,

I'm in Hood River County, State of Oregon. That's about 3/4 of the way eastward through the Columbia river Gorge National Scenic Area. Daughter shot the pics with a telephoto so all the background looks compressed, but yes, I enjoy a great view from here every day--Mt. Hood to the South, Mt. Adams to the North. And the view is even better when you can plant a venerable Cat in front of it.

I was in Wyoming once when I was a kid. We got nothing up on Jackson Hole!

Jack

Here's a few more pics. You can see it really is a small pile. But the only difference between men and boys is the size of their toys.

It got Mark's attention when she went over the top, even at dead slow speed!

Jack,
I'll attest that you got great views everywhere on that mountaintop. Barb and I really liked the area and we did spend quite alot of time driving up and down the river on both the Oregon and Washington sides:D . She is still pushing me to move that way but I got alot of baggage to lose before I can really consider it.

As far as overcentering a tracked vehicle, it is always a rush for me. Even when I put tracks on my Bobcat, going over the hump on my beavertail trailer with either machine raises the hair on the back of my neck.

That should have gotten his attention, I pulled onto a jobsite one morning with the lo-boy and the foreman was on the 850 JD, going over a small pile, he ended up on the hood, I saw his silouhette against the morning sun launching forward, think the exhaust pipe stopped him. Same guy buried up to his neck in a trench collapse, had to dig him out by hand, seemed accident prone, seeing him fly out of the seat was kind of scary, thankful he did not end up on the ground with the machine in motion. He was trying to get a little seat time in, got cut short that morning.

That's why I put that seat belt on my D4, of course after I got throwed out of the seat and my right forarm into the exhaust stack. Got a nice 2 inch scare. But only on flat ground not a side hill. Anyway Jackson Hole is just a money pit. I've been here 10 years and haven't made it over there yet. Want to talk about a rush, at the mine on our back fills we have benches that stair step about 60 foot high, sometimes we have to go a bench or two down and instead of tracking around and using the truck ramps we just take that D10 or 11 and dive off, with a BIG blade of dirt in front of course. But standing on the foot rest and looking straight at the ground is a rush, and once you go over the point of no return there is no backing up you just slide down down down. But what a rush. LOL