It was the first time since 2001 that the rodeo was in town but by the time the sun was high, no one seemed to be thinking about how long it had been. It was fun – and fun was the operative word for the day.
The site of this year’s rodeo was the equipment yard at Monroe Tractor’s Henrietta branch, just south of Rochester, NY adjacent to the NY Thruway tollbooth off I-390. This was the centralized location for a friendly competition that would pit heavy equipment operators from as far east as Central New York (the Syracuse branch customers) and as far west as the Niagara Frontier (the Buffalo branch customers) against the locals (Rochester branch customers).
By the looks on their faces, location wasn’t the big draw. But, you’ll have to figure out for yourself what the draw was, because it could have been so many things this year.
It could have been the opportunity to sit at the controls of a new Case 440 skid steer or even a Case 580 Super M series loader/backhoe. But clearly, the excitement was focused on each operator’s ability to make these heavy-duty machines do what they wanted them to do on the Rodeo competition field.
Now to the uninitiated, like yours truly, the various challenges on the field of “combat” didn’t look all that difficult. Drop a soccer ball in a basket here, a softball in another basket over there. No big deal. Or, how about picking up a basketball from a pedestal over here on your right and simply depositing it into a 30-gallon trash barrel over on your left. Not exactly something that requires the finesse of an alley-oop, is it?
Well, uninitiated or not, it quickly became apparent that these big machines, while ideal for the construction chores, are a little bit like the proverbial bull in a china closet when it comes to the bouncing rubber ball kinda thing. So, you quickly understood the spectator moans, as one skilled operator after another climbed confidently into the cab of a 580 Super M only to have his (or her) hopes dashed when the ball came flying out of the backhoe’s bucket and totally overshot the basket.
This was going to take more finesse on the operator’s part than was first apparent. Slow. Easy. Careful. Gently. Ever-so-gently. Not words you often associate with the operation of a backhoe but words you could literally hear the operators thinking as each attempt brought with it an ever-increasing understanding of how light the touch had to be.
You can believe it when I say, us spectator-types, didn’t have to keep our eyes on the balls to understand how things were going. The expressions
on the faces of each competitor
told the whole story. No instant replay needed.
Playing ball not your thing? How about moving a bench with two pedestals
(themselves topped with softballs) from one side of the backhoe to the other. That might sound simple enough until you recognize
that to do so you have to hoist a bar attached to the bench by two chains and move the whole contraption. You won’t think it’s so simple once you see how easy the bench starts swaying at the ends of those chains. Pictures don’t do this challenge justice.
If none of this makes you break out in a sweat, try fitting a square block into a square hole and then a triangle-shaped block into a hole of the same shape. You’re catching on by now, aren’t you? There’s always a catch at this rodeo. Whether it’s a square or a triangle, it’s dangling at the end of a 10-foot chain and all you have to work with are the controls in the cab of the 580M.
Fifty-four operators from the greater western counties of Upstate New York competed and some 250 attended the rodeo on this warmer than usual fall day. Journalists from Construction Equipment Guide and Time-Warner Cable’s Channel
13 were on hand to record the events. Just before the day would wrap-up with the awards presentation another presentation – this one a $1,000 check donated by Monroe Tractor to the Flower
City Habitat for Humanity. That was in addition to another
$300 that Habitat raised from donations throughout the day.
As the brilliant autumn sun climbed higher into the sky and started to head to the west, the times recorded by operator after operator began to come down. For sure, to the winners of this rodeo, the times were important. After all, the winner
was destined for Las Vegas and the national competition.
Still, despite this enticing grand price, this rodeo was all about camaraderie,
family, friends, food, and fun.
|
