Views from the Cab

By David Tollefson, Columnist

My holiday trip to see loved ones in the D.C. area occurred in almost perfect weather. The way it occurred, my other daughter, from the Stillwater area, and I flew from Minneapolis to Dulles airport, but for the return trip back to Minnesota, my oldest daughter Kris drove us home to Minnesota along with their family dog, Lucky.

There are advantages and disadvantages to both methods of travel. I do get irritated with the long lines at the airports and the hassle of going through security.

The only “oops” with the security this time was that in putting electronics in a plastic tub, I inadvertently placed my iPad on top of the laptop computer. So that tub had to be sent back to the beginning of the process, which took an extra 10 minutes or so. Lesson learned for next time, I guess. At least I don’t have to take my shoes off anymore.

The distances from where we entered and exited both airports (MSP and Dulles) are quite far to the gates where you board and depart the plane. I love those moving belts between gates where you can either just stand on the right side, or walk as fast as you want on the left side.

The flight to D.C. was on time or even ahead of schedule due to a tail wind. But I thought the descent was rougher than normal. I would not have wanted my soft drink to have been sitting in the little depression in the fold-down table as it might have spilled – it was that rough. But that was after the pilot had reminded seat belts to be fastened.

Once on the ground at the huge Dulles airport, we had to navigate several long escalators, a fast indoor train, then more escalators to get to the baggage claim, then outside. Daughter Kris found us quite quickly and we exited to a pretty nice, sunny day in northern Virginia.

I have a brother and family in Maryland, across the Potomac River. They happen to live not too far from Gaithersburg, where a few days ago a small plane, in foggy conditions, slammed into the vertical steel support for some huge power lines. They were stuck 100 feet in the air. Thousands of people had no power for several hours while they worked to get the two people in the plane who waited seven hours to get down and to medical facilities. All that time the wires around the plane had to be grounded so a big cherry picker got the passengers down, then a huge crane lowered the plane to the ground.

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So in the six days I was gone, we were pretty well occupied with catching up with my daughter and son-in-law’s two high school girls, the older one (almost 17) busy with her new pottery hobby (both in school and at home). She tells me it’s called “throwing” clay. I have my order in for a very special coffee mug for my kitchen. In case anyone is interested, here is her new Instagram account: @rowanfuchspottery.

The other granddaughter Erin (almost 15) is more into athletics, both basketball and volleyball. I got to watch one practice for club travel volleyball team, where she was invited to join.

When she plays basketball, I can access her games via a simulcast network, provided by the Fairfax County schools.

The advantage of travelling by car on the way home is that of seeing the countryside. We drove the tollways to save time, beginning with the Pennsylvania turnpike most of the way across Pennsylvania into Ohio. It is rather dramatic how the hills and curves of Pennsylvania all of a sudden turn into quite level land most of the rest of the way into Indiana and Illinois.

Noticing gas prices, in Virginia where Kris lives, the price of gas was a little higher than Pope County, but not by much.

Pennsylvania, on the other hand, in spite of being an oil-producing state, had prices all over $4.

Ohio prices were down as low as $2.77. Wisconsin, where I used to avoid filling on gas on the way to the east coast, was just a little over $3 on average.

On my way back to my farm from the Twin Cities area, I filled on for $3.03 at a Pilot station toward St. Cloud.

Being a passenger most of the way from the east coast, I had plenty of opportunity to see what the farmers were up to. I was surprised how many fields of corn were still to be harvested. With the price of corn in Glenwood at around $6.60, I can’t believe why people or their bankers would leave that kind of money per acre in the field to be buried in possible snow, or eaten by wildlife.

I’m always interested how farmers between here and the East coast do their tillage. Very little soybean ground is tilled, and some probably has a cover crop seeded during or before harvest to provide a green crop to prevent wind and water erosion during the winter.

A lot of corn ground is also left untilled. A small portion of corn stubble was harvested for feed or bedding using round bales.

The tilled corn ground I saw did not seem to be deep tilled by aggressive rippers. There seems to be more and more “vertical tillage” using high-speed discs rather than tines or chisel-type devices that dig up quite a few rocks where they are a continuing problem, as are lot of acres in our part of the corn belt.

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Please contact David Tollefson with thoughts or comments on this or future columns at: adtollef@hcinet.net