{"id":5504,"date":"2017-05-23T22:21:27","date_gmt":"2017-05-24T03:21:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/?p=5504"},"modified":"2017-05-23T22:34:41","modified_gmt":"2017-05-24T03:34:41","slug":"and-the-sound-of-air-horns-was-heard-by-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/?p=5504","title":{"rendered":"And the sound of air horns was heard by all"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"touch-a-truck_46115-7\"<\/a>Last weekend Main Street in Mandan was home to Touch a Truck, put on by the Mandan Progress Association.\u00a0 If you were coming into Mandan from the east and didn’t know what the heck the DOT sign flashing “TOUCH TRUCKS AHEAD” meant, your confusion probably only lasted a moment until you saw all the crane booms up ahead.<\/p>\n

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\"touch-a-truck_45992-4\"<\/a>There were all kinds of trucks and various other equipment, with the cranes being the most prominent.\u00a0 There were road striping trucks, sanitation trucks, bucket trucks, the works.<\/p>\n

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\"touch-a-truck_45759\"<\/a>Of course, one doesn’t have to be a piece of heavy equipment or possess hydraulics with super powers to be an awesome truck.\u00a0 The Bookmobile was there, too.\u00a0 And it looked like it was getting a lot of attention from the kids.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"_MG_45749\"<\/a>See the giant crane?\u00a0 Well, each of the four hydraulic cylinders holding it in the air is fed by a trio of the tiny little metal elbows you can see me pointing at on the left.\u00a0 Crazy.<\/p>\n

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\"touch-a-truck_46049\"<\/a>My favorite thing about the cranes, how they hoist Old Glory.\u00a0 The colors were on display and waving in the breeze.<\/p>\n

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\"touch-a-truck_45971-3\"<\/a>Tractors and other big equipment was present as well.\u00a0 They may not have air horns like some of the other trucks, but they have plenty of stuff to climb on and buttons to push.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"touch-a-truck_45980-2\"<\/a>\u00a0 Then there were the mini excavators, which were a hit.\u00a0 I think there was a line to see them at one point.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"touch-a-truck_45968-70\"<\/a>This is only a drill. There, I did it.\u00a0 You can’t stop me.\u00a0 My kids don’t think I’m funny either.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"touch-a-truck_45997\"<\/a>Balloon animals were available, or in the case of my kids balloon swords.\u00a0 Guess how long those lasted before popping in battle.\u00a0 En garde!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"_MG_45784\"<\/a>Another attraction that amounts to playing in the box the toy came in:\u00a0 These sections of conduit were a hit with the kids, who climbed in and promptly insisted their parents roll them around on the grass.\u00a0 Yes, I did it too…rolling, not climbing inside.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"touch-a-truck_46069-71\"<\/a>These guys are heroes every time I place an order with B&H or Amazon.com.\u00a0 Note the flag in the background.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"touch-a-truck_46075-7\"<\/a>I never get tired of shots like this.\u00a0 The weather was perfect, the skies cleared enough to give me a sunburn by the end of the day, and the breeze kept everything comfortable and the flags waving.<\/p>\n

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\"touch-a-truck_45818-20\"<\/a>One time my kids saw me running camera for a monster truck show, getting closeups of giant trucks doing wheelies and burnouts.\u00a0 The next day my wife took them to watch me on a rooftop, shooting video and stills of a helicopter doing touch-n-go’s on a helipad.\u00a0 When I was tucking them in, I asked if they thought their Daddy had a pretty cool job.\u00a0 “Yeah,” was the reply, “But did you know that Uncle [my brother-in-law] is a mailman?<\/strong><\/em>”\u00a0 He’d subbed in our neighborhood and let them walk his route with him for a bit, totally stealing my thunder.<\/p>\n

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\"touch-a-truck_45947-9\"<\/a>It’s a small crane, but the kids got to operate it…lifting and moving a small load using the tethered controller.<\/p>\n

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\"touch-a-truck_45824-6\"<\/a>This gives a whole new meaning to the term “Boom town”, doesn’t it?\u00a0 I just made that up right now as I’m typing.\u00a0 Seriously.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"touch-a-truck_45959-61\"<\/a>I bet I could set off these scales nowadays…I need to bike more and shovel less food into my head.\u00a0 But when I keep coming up with things like blueberry ice cream float recipes, that isn’t very easy.\u00a0 Actually, these scales did weigh my kids, so they don’t just work for heavy things.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"touch-a-truck_45863-5\"<\/a>This was a fantastic event, with lots of fun for kids and big kids.\u00a0 I sure hope they do this again next year!\u00a0 I may bring ear plugs next time, though, because they let the kids tug the air horns in the trucks.\u00a0 It was a wonderful cacophony, don’t get me wrong, but they get pretty loud!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last weekend Main Street in Mandan was home to Touch a Truck, put on by the Mandan Progress Association.\u00a0 If you were coming into Mandan from the east and didn’t know what the heck the DOT sign flashing “TOUCH TRUCKS … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,8,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cool","category-events","category-vehicles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5504"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5504\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5511,"href":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5504\/revisions\/5511"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}