What The Hay?
Monday, December 27th, 2021
We encountered the hay truck shortly after this rest stop in the Snowy Range. Sorry, no photos of the hay trucks.
I find it pretty amazing how those container ships stack those things so high above the ship’s deck. It looks really top-heavy but clearly there has got to be a lot of ship below the water to keep it stable.
On dry land, the seemingly comparable situation is the way you sometimes see loads of hay stacked to tower way, way above the truck hauling it all. The difference being that there is no truck out of sight down below the road so that top-heavy load better be well stacked. Sometimes it is not.
Twice this past year, out on motorcycle trips, I encountered situations where those bales were not well stacked and secured.
The first was on the OFMC trip. We had been in Wyoming, having left Torrington, and were headed to Walden, back in Colorado. At Laramie we took US 230 southwest as it passes through just the southern edge of the Snowy Range.
Coming around a bend there was a warning cone in the road and a quick glance ahead showed why. A truck loaded to the sky with huge bales of hay was part-way off on the side of the road with its load leaning menacingly toward the highway. Oh my gosh, there’s a real mess trying to happen. We gave it all a wide berth.
At least that guy didn’t lose his load. He had folks there to help and they were doing whatever it would take to put it all back to right. But clearly somebody didn’t do their job all that well when that truck was loaded. Or maybe that driver was just going way too fast.
It was a very different case, however, when, on the Colorado Cruise with the RMMRC, we were crossing Grand Mesa on our first day out. As we came down CO 65 toward I-70 in Debeque Canyon there were warning cones in the road. And there ahead was another hay truck. But this one didn’t have any hay on it. It’s entire load was scattered on and around the highway. Somebody had a real mess to clean up. And somebody probably got seriously reamed out by their boss.
Gosh, the things some people will do just to keep life interesting for us traveling motorcyclists!
Biker Quote for Today
You know you’re a biker if you have a refrigerator in the garage just for beer.
