good job, bad boy!

leah and i took the bad boy out while we were at the farm over the weekend. the following is the true tale of our trip. (i wish i had pictures to prove it.)

an 800-acre farm is a little too big to explore on foot, even for the most ambitious. the thompsons are prepared for this small inconvenience with a golf-cart-like vehicle known as a "bad boy." it is super stealth because it runs on battery, not a noisy engine. hopping in the bad boy for the first time, i could hardly contain my excitement. no seat belt, no doors...nothing could hold me back from spotting flora and fauna in the wild today. flora i saw a-plenty. fauna...well, that depends on what you call fauna.

the first lesson i learned was that you should always keep your mouth closed when driving on a bad boy. it's grasshopper season and those things can fly right in. the second lesson...well, scratch that, it wasn't a lesson. i learned that i pinch people when i get scared. leah learned that, too. sorry, leah. the back-story here can be summed up in the conversation that follows:

"abbie, did you see that spider? we just drove through a huge web."
i grabbed leah's arm. "no, where was it?"
i see the web. i start pinching.
"oh, there he is. he's a big one! you don't have to pinch me!"
i am now fourteen feet from the bad boy. how? i don't know.

recovery took a while. i still might not be over it. it was a big one. anyway, the third lesson i learned was to always watch the battery level while driving a bad boy. the red light doesn't blink to remind you to check it, it blinks when YOU'RE OUT OF JUICE. somehow, while we were still out on the trails pretty far from the house, after we saw the blinking red light, we ran on battery fumes (you know what i mean) for probably a half a mile, which was a miracle. we made it all the way to the pond next to where the bad boy parks, but there was a hill. we took turns pushing it through those last few feet, unsuccessful due to the sweltering heat, the auto-brake on the bad boy, and the unavoidable laughter. oh well. we left it on the hill. leah went back to get the keys later and decided to try it and somehow the battery fumes or whatever they are doubled in strength and it made it's way up the hill! good job, bad boy!

flora = check, fauna = grasshoppers, spider, dead armadillo, squirrels. awesome.