Yesterday I went to see a man about a seat. A bench seat. A seat that will fit myself, and two car seats all neatly in a row. A seat for my new project vehicle which only has a front seat and must accommodate at least three members of my family. It's not a pickup truck. More on that later.
But I digress. On the way down to the nearest town with an upholstery shop (26 miles south), my car was "buzzed" by a yellow and black flying wonder.
It was not one of those deadly stinging harbingers of swollen appendage doom, the yellow jacket (which there are plenty of around here). Nor was it a huge bumble bee bent on mating with my fading black Civic coupe.
Spraying thick clouds of a combination of wheat plant nutrients and fatal doses of insect eradicator from beneath it's short wings, the barn-storming crop duster criss-crossed the highway in front of me, flying, what my landlubber senses felt to be, dangerously close to the ground.
Almost balletic in it's movements, it's back and forth trajectory was interrupted briefly at the end of the field by a sudden bank upwards, only to spin around and head back in the direction from whence it came.
I had to pull over and watch for several minutes.
He must have seen me stop to gaze at his skill, because after several passes closer and closer to the thirsty wheat fields, the yellow/black deliverer of insecticidal ale did several wing spinning rolls, seemingly just for my city slicker wonderment.
I still have no desire to learn to fly, but I will always remember witnessing my first crop dusting at the ripe young age of 41.
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You'd never witnessed a cropduster flying the fields before? Now you know why they have a tough time getting life insurance.
Now, to make it an even more impressive experience, go up near Beale AFB (noCal) and watch them dusting the fields there...once in a while you get treated to the cropduster and something like, an SR-71, in the same field of view for a fleeting moment or two.
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