Day trip, part 1

The oldest grandson had some sort of hopped-up engine built, a few months back; his intentions were to put it in the body of a small pickup truck and amaze people with the speed and power under the hood of said truck.  He has a lot of money tied up in the engine, the truck turned out not to be as road-worthy as he thought it was, and his interests have recently turned in other directions.  He's been hoping to get most of the money back that he put in the thing, possibly by trading for something that would be easier to sell than a specialty engine, so in his Craigslist ad he mentioned he would consider a trade.  So far, one person offered a zero-turn mower in trade and another fellow has a crotch-rocket type motorcycle plus some cash to offer.  

And then, there was a man with his deceased dad's tractor collection.  

Arick thought he might be able to sell some restored tractors after a period of time and thus get most of his investment in the engine.  He is no tractor expert, so he asked Cliff to go along and be his adviser.  They would take our truck, the hot-shot engine, and a huge, borrowed trailer big enough for two tractors to fit on.  Cliff had told the grandson what questions to ask the guy.  There were lots of pictures sent by email and questions asked and answered.  Arick was concerned about spending so much money on fuel for our gas-guzzling truck and actually talked the guy into paying half the fuel cost (Hays, Kansas, is over three hundred miles from here), whether the trade happened or not.  

I had no intention of going along, but Cliff thinks we are joined at the hip, and I could tell he really wanted me to go.  For somebody with achy knees, long rides aren't pleasant.  However, I recently bought some Joint Juice at Sam's Club, and it seems to be working a miracle for my knees; so I agreed to tag along.  At this point, Arick's fiance, Heather, decided a Saturday alone sounded boring and signed up for the trip.  

The owner of the tractor suggested we might want to eat in Abilene at the Brookville Hotel (it isn't really a hotel) either on the way there or on our way home.  The food, he said, was out of this world.  

Except for a couple of small problems in the beginning that were easily corrected, the trip was uneventful.  We saw hundreds of wind turbines.  Heather slept through about half the trip.  The timing wasn't right for eating at the Brookville Hotel on the way, so we grabbed something at a McDonald's and hoped we could eat some tasty chicken on the way back.  

Arick was thinking of trading this...

for these:

Stay tuned.