The Story of I Ron Ore - 3

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Next big crawly things start coming towards the piles that have been shaken loose by the bang. We have learned that the humans call these big things shovels, but they don't look anything like the shovel humans use to move snow so I find it confusing. These crawly things, oops, shovels, scoop up as many of us as will fit in the bucket. Then we go for a short ride as we swing from the pile to above a truck. The bottom falls out of the bucket and we skydive into the truck. Whee! What an adventure.

We now go for a short ride in the back of the big truck. They take us to a place that has been known locally as the loading pocket. It sure doesn't look like the pocket on mom's apron but who can figure out these humans anyway? The truck backs up towards a large hole; the dump box raises and we slide out just like going down a slipperty slide. Whoopee, this is fun. From the top of the hole we tumble in a zigzag tunnel until we reach the bottom.

Here a pan feeder takes us on another short ride until we fall off the edge and freefall into what is known in these parts as a gondola. I thought a gondola would be a romantic moonlight ride on a little boat in Italy, boy was I wrong. A gondola is just a fancy name for an ore-carrying railroad car.

We then go on a nine-mile ride in what is known as an ATO or automated train operation. I wasn't too sure about riding in a train with no engineer to drive it or no roof on the car to keep the rain and snow out, but it was a fun ride anyway. The next stop is the crusher. It sounds scary, but looking over the edge of the gondola, in fact it looks something like a mortar and pestle except the pestle is dangling from an arched beam.

This thing was huge but as the far side of the car is lifted and the front side starts to rise, I, like the rest of my friends, jump in. Just like a real amusement park, every ride is a little bit different, exciting and fun. We slide down the sides of a bowl like structure towards the pestle. We are all acting like humans when they ride a roller coaster. We're bouncing around, waving our arms and screaming in fun. During this ten-second ride we are reduced to smaller groups that are less than 8" across. We then slide through the opening at the bottom of this ride ready to continue our journey.

We are now on another pan feeder type ride. We move from the back towards a short drop-off. We land on what is known by the humans as a primary conveyer. This conveyer is about five feet wide and moves very quickly and travels slightly uphill with the grade getting steeper the further we go. Suddenly, like a kiddy roller coaster at an amusement park, there is a steep dip and we all tumble into a covered building. Although I didn't see any cows or horses, these humans named this building the barn. Here we get to take a little nap while waiting for the next part of our adventure.