Wow, who needs joke of the day with this thread to read. I'm sure if I think about it there'll be plenty more, but this one is first. About 15 yrs ago, I was working with my dad. We had the old 1080B at the time. Rails were shot, every time you turned you had to pick up one side or the other to get the rail back under the rollers. We were hauling rip rap out of farmers fields in the wintertime. So, it's about 9 pm, on a Friday night, been dark for hours, finally old man says good enough for the day. But, he wants to move the hoe to the next pile. So, instead of walking it back about a quarter of a mile to the approach, I decide to just walk along the road, down in the field. So, I'm happily clanking along, on top of the snow, when I realize I'm not on top of the snow anymore. What's worse, there is water in my tracks. And cattails. So, I try to get the tracks pointed towards the road so I can just climb up onto the road. Begin to attempt the jump turn maneuver. Run the idler right out of the rail. So there I sit, in about 3' of snow on top of 18" of water and sunk into the mud. And we have to put a track back on. &#%# my life. Took us about two hours to get the track back on, now the damn thing won't climb the ditch to get onto the road. So, off the old man goes to find the county blade man to bring the blade out to help pull it back onto road. Reason being was biggest machine we had besides this hoe is a little 1150E dozer. THAT'S not going to pull it up the ditch, especially on frozen road. By this time, it's almost midnight, I'm soaked past my knees, covered in mud, and ready to just walk away. Blade shows up, can't get me up the ditch. So, off the old man goes to get rubber-tire. 30 miles away. When he gets there, we had to dig a ramp up the inslope of the road to get the hoe to walk up. Had to have the backhoe with the frost bucket because road was froze too hard for the excavator to get through. For at least the next 5 yrs, any time I ran into a county employee, they asked me if I'd been fishing with an excavator lately.