Red Power! (and sunburns)

Yesterday was a loooong day. And I've got a sunburn on the back of one arm.

Yesterday was the day my parents decided to come up for the Red Power Round Up. It's a big exhibition/display show for International Harvester tractors and related equipment - Farmall, Cub Cadet, anything made by the IH company (which is now Case IH, unless it's been re-sold again). Dad's a big IH supporter, and still uses his dad's old Farmall M from 1950.

We only got a half-hour's notice, since they called on the road to let us know when they'd be here. El Burrito was still asleep when Mom called, and still eating breakfast when Dad knocked on the door. Dad was in a bit of a hurry, so it's a good thing I'd packed the diaper bag the night before. We were out the door 15 minutes later, which is probably a record for us.

Aside from the really pathetic arrangements at the golf-cart rental, which held us up for half an hour at the gate, and did bad things to Dad's mood, things went pretty well. We ended up with a golf cart, and only paid $40 instead of $75 for it (I said the rental system was screwy, right?). I remembered the sunscreen, and we all had a good time. We did some shopping (the main building has A/C), got lunch from the FFA stand (their meat-judging team is raising money for a judging trip to Scotland), and saw loads of red tractors.

El Burrito didn't nap, but he had a really good time. He wore his red overall shorts with the IH patch on the bib, of course. One older fellow asked to take his picture with a tractor like his father had owned. Later, we walked by the Visitors' Bureau table, the three ladies working at the table saw the Burrito and went "Awwwww, isn't he cute!" practically in chorus. Cracked me up.

We stayed for 8 hours, and we were both tuckered out when we got home. El Burrito came home with a new Farmall shirt and IH hat, some toy tractors, and 6 books about Tractor Mac. (It's insanely hard to find any tractor merchandise for kids that features IH or Farmall. John Deere, on the other hand, is merchandised to death.)

I'm a little sorry that we missed Joe Ertl's presentation, though. Ertl is the company that makes the little scale-model farm equipment; they've got 1/64th and 1/16th scale, and a few others. Their toys used to be high-quality stuff, all die-cast metal. These days, the prices haven't gone down, but the toys are more plastic than anything. Sadly, the "Cars" toys from the Pixar movie are higher quality than the Ertl tractors I've seen, and at half the price. My brother's 20-year-old Ertl toys are still going strong, but the new ones we bought El Burrito are so flimsy that I'm probably not going to buy any more new ones. I'll just haunt Ebay and yard sales for some oldies.