What Should I Do?

The weather here has been extremely cold this week. We had been in the process of hauling corn from a bin where I live to the main farm where the feed mill is located. On Tuesday it was so cold( the high was 5 degrees) the boss told me I could take the day off and go down to Des Moines to the Power Farming Show. The show is located in and adjacent to old Veterans Auditiorium in Des Moines. From tractors to hitch pins, ag software, corn burning stoves, 4-wheelers, big round balers and diesel power chips for your pickup. You name it, if there is some way for this product to be tied to farming it will be there. Banks, seed companies, welding suppliers, poly liner kits for trucks and auger flighting, I could go on and on, and on and .......
Three of the four children were sick on Tuesday, fever and sore throat, coughs and very whiny, so my lovely wife was stuck at home with them, while I took the oldest to the farm show with me. Now 11 year old girls do not think going to a farm show with their boring father is a major good time, but her choices were rather limited, stay at home with the sickies, or go with the fat old dad. She chose the latter.
I had a great time, came home with a bag full of brochures, demo CD's, pencils, pens, candy, key chain flash light, a JD cap, and numerous other do-dads. Brought a stack of note pads to put by the telephone, computer and in the visor of the pickup, even got several of the wife's favorite lined note pads from a farm newspaper. As we left to go to the show my wife handed the daughter a strip of address stickers from the Easter Seals people. Now one of the big attractions at any of these shows is all the giveaways,, one of the banks was giving away a 6 piece set of DeWalt cordless power tools, another place a $100 dollar gift certificate to Cabel's, lots of scale model tractors, Miller welders had a leather jacket, a couple of those tractor shaped mail boxes,(I told the lady with the Mechanicial Failure err Massey Ferguson mail box that they couldn't pay me to take that one) and ........I had to stop just now to eat my supper.


My favorite radio station WHO Radio out of Des Moines, Iowa, is a talk station. Years ago I started listening to hear that great bag of wind Rush Limbaugh. Later, I started to listen in the mornings from 9:00 to 11:30 to Jan Mickelson, a Christian/libertarian. After Jan's show is the farm news and markets, from 11:30 to 1:00. Over the years as I have become more established in my own personal convictions, I slowly found myself listening less and less to the mouth piece of the Republicans, Limbaugh, while I never miss Mickelson and consider him a fount of knowledge and wisdom. But most every day I listen to at least part of the farm news and markets on WHO. One of the hosts of that program(The Big Show) is a charismatic and jovial fellow, Mark Pearson, who simply has to be heard to be understood. He has sold a CD doing farm comedy, "Horny the Cow" and other hilarious bits. Mark came up with the idea of getting together a bunch of farmers and their old, antique, classic tractors and then taking a slow leisurely tour through the countryside. The station has been doing this thing for 10 years now. 500 tractors winding through the hills and valleys of the heartland, stopping in small towns to eat and generally celebrating the rural lifestyle.

All of this to say that today I found out that my daughter had put my name sticker on a drawing to win a place on the tractor ride this coming July. Now those of you who know me well, know that I love tractors. I have two in the shed right now that I'm supposed to be working on, instead of blogging. I love to look at old tractors, I go to tractor pulls, I can tell what kind of tractor is going by on the road without looking, just listening to the sound. I love tractors. But I'm not sure this tractor ride thing is for me? It would mean taking three days of vacation, which I should probably spend with my family. The ride this year is in the farthest parts of southern Iowa, so it would require getting a tractor down there and back. And, I'm not sure I really want to ride around with 499 other tractors playing follow the leader for three days.

UPDATE:

After reading Bill's comment, I can tell I wasn't very clear in stating, I Won! The places on this ride cost at least $250 dollars and are limited to 500 tractors. Also, it wasn't necessarily my daughters fault that my name sticker got put on the drawing. We went down the aisles signing up for numerous things, this was one of them.

Several years ago I won a portable LCD DVD player, so we sign up for a lot of stuff that we never figure we will win.

So what should I do?

Any suggestions would be appreciated.