A dusty, sweaty week.

After exciting times last weekend, this week's news will probably bore you all to death.  But here it is anyway, faithfully recorded for your reading pleasure.

We hit the ground running Monday morning, no matter that hours of sleep were few.  It was out the door by 8 am.  

 The road out to the field.

This doesn't do the bumpiness and dustiness justice, but it gives you an idea.  We checked in with the guys (the combine operators) and got caught up on how their weekend went.  Rain.  Good for us, we didn't miss anything.  Not so good for them, apparently harvesters don't like to be slowed down.  

It's sort of strange.  Now that the big stuff is done, the installations and explanations, José and Leandro haven't been coming out to the field with us (not to mention they're busy with their own jobs!).  That leaves the translating work to me.  It's been fun, actually.  The guys have been gracious about my lack of technical Spanish vocabulary (Jonathan, not so gracious, was quick to point out when he knew the word for auger cart before I did).  And I've seen just how vital language is to this whole process.  Testing the product really wouldn't work well without the ability to get to know the group who does the testing for you.  Communication is key.  While that makes me feel very needed, I'm a little worried about what Brazil will be like.  I guess that will be a whole different adventure.

Yesterday, we went to Agroexpo, a farm progress show a few hours south.  José had a booth, and we went to do some corporate espionage research regarding planters in Argentina.  Fact: the U.S. has 3 major planter brands.  Argentina has, like, 50.  No joke.  And we went to every single one, got a tour of several of their models, and took hundreds of pictures.  In the hot sun.  At least I got to work on my tan.    Actually, that didn't go so well, sun screen was a complete oversight on my part and we both turned out burnt to a crisp by the end of the day. 

 Standing on a planter.

Thankfully, José's booth was in an air conditioned building.  Very nice.  I recognized that it was the right booth instantly because of the video of Greg Sauder playing against the back wall.

A familiar sight.  "technosem" is the name of José's business.

This wasn't the kind of ag show a lumberjack show, unfortunately, and there weren't any booths with free pens.  But at least there was good meat for lunch.  Speaking of food, we'll be ready to get back to some american food.  Of course, as expected, the meat is really good here, but that's about all they have.  Not much variety at all.  Every restaurant has just about the same menu.  We did find one place that we really like and have eaten there probably ten times.  It's a small place in the middle-of-nowhere farm town we stayed in for awhile.  The waitress was always the same girl about my age with a little girl (her daughter?) about 3 or so hanging around too.  The waitress might have doubled as the cook too; we never saw anyone else.  They always had only 2 choices for the menu, so there was a little more variety.  Looking at that sentence, it makes no sense.  But it's true, I guess the only way to have more variety around here is to have fewer options.  That said, we are getting our fill of milanesa (breaded tenderloin), bife (cut of steak), jamón (ham), white bread, and salad with oil and vinegar.  

Today we're back in good 'ole One-Eyed Deer.  The guys have moved to a different field which is much closer to this area.  Now...on to thinking about weekend plans...