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When you drive 28 year old equipment(see photo) there tends to be a bit of continuing tension as you may keep yourself entertained contemplating the parts of truck and trailer that may momentarily fail and leave you stranded the middle of nowhere in who knows what kind of conditions with four horses on board fighting heat and flies.

I'm other than the type, but, when I'm transporting horses there's always that little knot in the stomach based on anticipation and past history. I never know exactly when and where the hammer will drop, but, it seems, trips to Eureka have hardly ever been dull.

Such it was this morning when the little knot started forming as I was topping off the radiator of the 1979 F-350 and it took two full gallons, what the heck?!

Just for clarification, I recently conducted a $3000 maintenance job on this truck, and I've been test driving it for the last two weeks without problems. We headed out just before sunrise and less than 3/4 mile a hissing. Lift the hood and vapor emanating from the engine block. Cracked block maybe? But, it stops as I'm watching it, and then, except for wall to wall morning rush hour traffic, we have an uneventful 40 miles to Olathe, Ks. At that point I see water vapor on the windows, shortly followed by the vapor smell. Nothing wrong this time except the radiator lost all it's water. Luckily I have 3 gallons on board. This trip obviously is over. Small stuff really in the horse racing scheme of things, and we head back with $30 worth of Quick Trip anti-freeze in tow. Only as I'm driving into the farm do I realize for the umpteenth time I've confused the oil temp. gage with the water temp, which has the arrow on high explaining suddenly also the strange noises from the engine. Lucky we made it back. The horses are thrilled.

I got into a tussle with a neer do well trainer back in 1998 at the KY Horse Center. This idiot was just in from Belmont Park and was ridiculing my equipment. Little did this fellow know that for what I've spent in horseracing I might own a fleet of 30 to 40 brand new F-350s. Personally, I prefer to put my money in horses, though I'll confess the old truck and trailer that have served us so well are getting a little long in the tooth. Shall we say, the day is coming. Maybe it was today.

Oh Well! Farm breezes tonight, we'll sleep all this off, and then on to Plan B in the morning.

Today's Training:
5/19/07 Sat. Day 2 Burch: 1.5 miles slow riderless gallop done intermittently and 10 min tack walking.
5/20/07 Sun. Day 3 Burch: 4 x 1f riderless speed work at 90% speed. 10 min walk under tack.
5/21/07 Mon. Day 1 Burch: Off.