Tuesday – We are on the road by 7:40 am and easily (only one
wrong turn) find our farm where we park on the frosted grass. So far the only problem was the motel ran out
of coffee at breakfast so a Starbucks stop was required. Our first site was a soil developed in coal
mine spoil, all human made. We did two
more sites than had a break for lunch. The temperature soared up to near 50 by noon,
but the cool 30s we started with kept us pretty chilly. The gloves and hand warmers worked great and some used them as toe
warmers in those cold rubber boots. We did two more
sites after lunch, mostly soils with argillics and textures of silt loam or
silty clay loam, with a few silty clays thrown in for good measure. We all got lots of sun and some wind for
rosy cheeks. We got back to the motel
around 4:30 and headed to downtown Morgantown for dinner at 5:00. We found downtown and walked down High
Street, the local Thai Restaurant looked inviting so after buying postcards in
the Univ. West Virginia gift shot we arrived at 5:50 for dinner. I figured I would have plenty of time to make
my 7:00 pm meeting as there were only 10 tables occupied. Well the service was slow, the food did not
arrive till 6:40, so I was going to be late to the coaches meeting. The pad Thai I ordered was mild, but the lip
burning meal, was almost more than I could master. I choked it down with a big glass of
water. The others meals looked pretty
good, but not exceptional. I don’t think
any of us will get sick. We left at 6:55
and I arrived at 7:15 for my meeting. We
had trouble finding the room but Tom Rice of Cal Poly helped me out. We got some information about the contest
then the time was spent by a few coaches arguing about the little details. It seemed the coaches from the East and
southeast really like to make lots of minor points about things they saw or did
not see. Anyway, the student’s had dropped
me off so I had no way to leave. I was
hoping to catch a ride but the folks who kept walking out were not staying at
my motel. I finally left at 9:30 and
called Blair to come and pick me up, which he did. As it turns out Iowa left just before we did
and I could have ridden back with them. The coaches meeting was mostly disorganized
mutterings as the person in charge just wondered from site to site explaining
why he did or did not do something, instead of going in an organized manner
through each of the soil pits. That was
pretty disappointing, that the items of confusion were not able to be addressed
in an organized fashion for all the coaches, not just the few folks from the
region who were present for the regional contest, or at least that was my
feeling, though I did not stay for the whole mess. I got home did my e-mail, pictures, blog and
went to bed to read the paper. We arise
at 6:30 again tomorrow for the last practice day.
