CODA
BY KEVIN G. SUMMERS
I
t’s haymaking time again, and, like clockwork, I’ve got an issue of SubTel Forum magazine coming out at the same time. But I’m not complaining, because while it’s unpleasant to work all day in the field and all night on the computer, at least I don’t have to sit in traffic every day. When we made our first cutting of hay earlier this summer, I found myself questioning the life I had chosen. This was, literally, the second time I had ever been on a tractor, and we had absolutely no idea what we were doing. It was brutal, but we learned our lessons, learned our equipment, and even made some hay while the sun was shining. Good times.
Most of the problems we were experiencing the first time around were due to a missing piece on the tractor’s lift arms. We’re borrowing my neighbor’s tractor, you see, and apparently the part in question broke once upon a time and he replaced it with something else. The replacement sort of worked, but my neighbor was mostly using the tractor for light mowing and not for the stressful haymakig that I was subjecting it to. In other words, his makeshift solution didn’t work under fire. Having learned this lesson the hard way, I called up the local John Deere store and ordered a replacement part. I put it on the tractor, and amazingly enough,
it worked beautifully. I mean, what took me days of cursing and shaking my fist at the heavens last time around was just as easy as pie when we did it using the right part. What does this have to do with submarine cables? You figure it out.
Kevin G. Summers is the Editor of Submarine Telecoms Forum and has been supporting the submarine fibre optic cable industry in various roles since 2007. Outside of the office, he is an author of fiction whose works include ISOLATION WARD 4, LEGENDARIUM and THE MAN WHO SHOT JOHN WILKES BOOTH. editor@subtelforum.com