Yesterday, when the mechanic called to tell me that my truck needed two front-wheel bearings, he also mentioned that I needed to think about replacing the pads on the front brakes.
This morning, when I got dropped off to pay for the work and pick up the vehicle I said I wanted to schedule having the front brakes done.
Mike, the other mechanic in the shop said "I got time. I can gitter-done today."
I agreed that it made sense, while thinking it would have made more sense to have told them to do the work while the wheels were off for the bearing change.
I called my ride but didn't get an answer, so I started walking home. I was well hydrated, the temperature was mild, I was wearing trail-running shoes and I walk almost that distance every day.
I was off of M-50 in less than 20 minutes. Ten minutes later I crested a hill and was out-of-sight of houses. Fifteen minutes after that I was stepping off the gravel road to cut across a farm field. That is where things didn't work out as planned.
My memory was that the field I planned to walk across was planted to soybeans. The field I had access to was planted to corn. No problem. I will just follow the edge of the corn field northeast until I hit the soybean field.
Except when I got to the hunting blind in the corner of the field, the next field was also planted to corn. Whatever. I checked the compass on my phone (which is not all that accurate), took a bearing on a tree on the far side of the 1/2 mile long field and plunged into the corn. I immediately lost sight of the tree but at least I knew the rows were running North/South.
For those who aren't from farm country, corn is planted in rows that usually run the long dimension of the field with the exception of the ends which have rows that run parallel to the short dimension. It is much easier to walk in the direction of the rows which are typically 30 inches apart than it is to push across the rows which have corn plants every six-to-eight inches.
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| Palmer Amaranth and Waterhemp are very similar and they hybridize. Both of them are showing resistance to glyphosate herbicide. |
This corn field was infested with Palmer Amaranth or Water-Hemp (a similar species of amaranth). And it was five-to-seven feet tall and it was pollinating. Batting a stem of it left a cloud of pollen at the same level as my face.
Side note here: If the weed is pollinating then it doesn't have seeds. Late August, future infestation of some kinds of weeds can be controlled by cutting the stalks of some species of weeds even this late in the season.
I didn't have my eye-drops (Opcon-A) or any antihistamines on my person. I didn't have tissues or a handkerchief. I looked around and saw that the rows a scant 20' from me had corn that was much taller and far fewer weeds. I moved over seven rows and struck out for the far side.
In one way, the pollen that I am allergic to creates a quick reaction in my body. Primarily my eyes swelling and secondarily skin dermatitis. Even though I had been walking through that crap for a few minutes, I had no signs of an issue.
I looked at my watch. A half-mile is 10 minutes if I hustle. When I encountered a flowering head of amaranth, I didn't bat it out of the way, I gently moved it with my forearm.
After about eight minutes of walking in the corn, the corners of my eyes started getting itch. Close to the 10 minute mark, the direction of the rows changed 90 degrees. Then 40 seconds later I was out of the field.
Another aside: The soybean field was only fifty feet to the side of where I was walking. It turns out that the soybean field does not extend the entire distance.
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| Overhead image of the location. Green area is planted to corn. Yellow area planted to soybeans. Black spot that is circled is the deer-stand where I made the decision to strike cross-country |
From there, the rest of the walk was uncomfortable. My eyes were both itchy and sensitive to light.
I had nothing clean to wipe my eyes. My shirt had also been bathed in amaranth pollen. I had been carrying Quick Silver's toy giraffe and blanket from the truck. Those were also both contaminated.
No issues with throat closing up. No hives. Just eye discomfort and my nose starting to run. I was about 3/4 mile from home.
Upon entering the house I grabbed the bottle of diphenhydramine and the Op-con A eye-drops and headed to the shower.
Lessons from the story
If you are subject to allergies then always carry meds with you that work well in YOUR body. Even when it is not "allergy season". For instance, I am very allergic to Orchard Grass pollen and for about one week at the end of May or early June, I have to be very careful. I got lazy and stopped carrying meds by mid-summer.
Your body changes and can become sensitized to different kinds of pollen or fungi after enough exposure. Challenges that were not a problem in the past can become a big problem in the future.
You might THINK you know the intimate details of your neighborhood but things change. Lots can get sold-off, blocking access to shortcuts. Farm fields can be resurveyed and the shape of it changes.
Compasses, even the crappy one on your smartphone are useful.
It is good to know how farmers plant fields. There are cases of children who became lost in fields and walked to the end of the row and then changed direction (within feet of a road) because the direction of the row changed. They were lost in those fields for MUCH longer than they needed to be.
Even if you have an X and a Y gene, it is possible to back-track and change your planned route. You don't have to tell anybody. Nobody is going to steal your man-card.
I did some things right (footwear, clothing, being hydrated, carrying a smartphone, choosing a low-traffic route). I also had the situational awareness to realize that the Palmer Amaranth infestation was more severe where the corn was not growing as well and shifted my path to the less-infested rows.
I did some things wrong...wandering into a field infested with Palmer Amaranth that is pollinating, being unaware of the subtle wrap-around nature of the corn field. I expect to be taken to task by Michael and Dan in comments for not turning around when I realized the P.A. was throwing clouds of pollen into the air when I vigorously batted them out of my way.
One point of discussion is that I had already been exposed to significant amounts of pollen before the fact clicked into place. If I had an anaphylactic reaction to it I would be toast without an epi-pen, even if I dialed 9-1-1. Walking back to the road would have just made it easier for the undertaker to collect my remains.
Human bodies are resilient. There was ot drama, no good-guy, no bad-guy. It was just "Shit happens and adults deal with it". I share the store for entertainment purposes and maybe you can be smarter than I am. I made the trip in about eighty minutes. Of course, after taking 50mg of diphenhydramine I had no ambition to do any work this afternoon.
