Headed to Laredo :)

So, I got to Utah with my 40k lbs worth of bud light. Dropped off, and within an hour I had a load going to California. I still had good time left on my DOT hours, so I went and picked up my new load and took off. I had to go weigh myself of course and get fuel, so I went to the nearest flying j, fueled, weighed my truck and trailer, and used the shower/bathrooms. I figured, I was planning ahead because I figured it was going to be late when I stopped, so I would probably end up stopping either at a rest area or just a random open lot that you see every so often that say "truck parking". Basically that's all they are, just a large open area with truck spaces where big rigs like myself can pull in there when we are getting low on hours, cover up our windows, climb in our sleeper and go to bed for 10 hours to let our time reset. That's exactly what I ended up doing. when it got late enough, and I was driving west, I found myself staring into the sunset. Sunsets are beautiful you might say, well try staring straight at it for a few hours while it sets. I have sun glasses, but they really weren't helping as much as I would have liked. I had them on, my vizor down, and i was holding up a book in front of my face every few minutes to try to help my eyes. Finally even though I had like 2 hours that I could still drive, I passed the sign "Next exit, truck parking". So I got off and parked in that huge open lot (i think i might have already written about that), and went to sleep. Well, in Cali, I was supposed to deliver Thursday at 5AM, and I arrived at the customer wednesday around 4PM. I pull into their lot, pull up to the gate, and i get out to come over to the intercom. I had hoped they would take me in early so that I could get loaded by the following morning and take off again. "Can I help you?" a robotic male voice came from the little box. "Yes, I'm delivering." I said. "What time is your appointment" the voice said. "I believe 5AM" "Wow you are like waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too early dude. You're going to have to come back at 5 in the morning." "no chance of getting in early eh?" "nope, sorry bro." So I got back on the highway and went about 5 or 6 miles to this rest area that I had seen as I was coming in. When I passed by it the first time, I eyed it to see how many open truck spaces there were. There appeared to be quite a few since most trucks during the day pull in, use the restroom, and leave. Very few stay until it's late at night and they are looking for a place to sleep. So, I find rest areas to be quite convenient. So I got up the following morning, and got to the shipper around 5, put my truck at the dock, got unloaded, and had a new load coming from calli to Dallas. I got over to the new customer, checked in and found out it was a meat packing plant. They were like "go ahead and unhook from your trailer. It will be quite a few hours till its ready, but our yard jockey will put it in the dock for you so we can load it." I was like "sounds great." They were like "also, there's a walmart close by and restaurants while you are a bobtail if you want to hit any of those." I was like "sure, sounds great, I don't get the chance to bobtail into walmart enough to re-supply my food in the truck." So I disconnected, and drove to walmart, and literally I pull in the parking lot to walmart and my driver manager calls me and says "the load's been canceled, we're going to have you take this other one. It should be ready right now so go ahead and head on over." I was like "mike, 1) i dropped my trailer back at this shipper so I will have to go back and get it. 2) I literally just pulled into walmart and I need groceries and this is the first chance in the past 4 weeks that I've had, so I'm going to take care of what I need to take care of, and then I will go pick up this other load." He was like "sounds good." So I get my groceries, which was basically a couple bags of beef jerky, 2 gallons of water, some gatorade, some ibc rootbeer cream soda (love that stuff! but prefer the orange cream soda that we used to be able to find at a convenient store near clinton when we lived there.)... Got some chips, a jar of peanuts, some more pop tarts, marshmellow fluff (since I have bread and peanut butter, figured Id throw something else in the mix). Got all checked out at walmart, put the stuff in the truck and walked across the street to jack in the box. (the worst part about being out on the road is you see all these different restaurant places that you might enjoy but you can't go there because there's no where big enough to park the truck and trailer). So, I got myself a sourdough jack combo with curly fries and then 4 of their tacos with no sauce. Twas a great lunch! I figured I didn't know what I'd have to eat after that, so that's why I figured go big or go home. OH! one other thing I got at walmart (since I'm a huge tea person) was 2 gallons of sweet tea. Apparently it was a good call because by the following day I had to slow down cuz I was already through half a gallon of it. lol.. It's like "ok ok man, drink water instead for a bit! geez!" lol So i went back to the shipper to get my trailer, and according to them the load wasn't canceled and my trailer was docked and being loaded. I called my manager back and was like "are you SURE that it was canceled, because they are loading my trailer right now!" He was like "let me make some calls and get back to you." So he calls back and says "they want a team to run it, so we are going to get you out of there and get you rolling. go get that other load and do what you can tonight." So I left and it took me an hour and a half to get to the other place (mainly because since my trailer was being loaded, I had to go to this drop yard and pick up another empty trailer. It sucked.. I was like "This sucks man, i HAVE a trailer, but since they changed things on me, i have to go pick up ANOTHER one and leave mine here. OY" but, being the good christian soldier I am, I kept on trucking.. <--- get it? trucking? oh nvm!.. lol So I get to the customer about 3 hours past the appointment time .. (the appointment was 12PM, I did't get assigned the load till 1:45, and I arrived around 4PM), and they had been long since closed for the day.. I'm talking, doors locked, everything locked up tighter than anything. So I called the main office and they told me i could park out behind the building where there was this huge open lot, so I did, covered up my windows, and went to sleep. The following morning, per their instructions, I waited till about 8am, and drove around to the front, parked, and went inside. Even the guys inside had to call someone to confirm that the load I was picking up was at this location, then when they realized that, they said "ok, park in door 20" So I did, and within 20 minutes they had me loaded and I was headed out of there. The funny thing was, the load they took me off of was because they said 1700 miles and delivering sunday was too tight and they needed a team to run it, but then the load I picked up (which was 45,000 lbs of unsalted butter... i know i know, the irony of it was that erin was texting me saying she needed more sticks of butter because of a cake she was doing, and I told her what i was hauling and she goes "that's not funny." or "that's not fair." i cant remember which.. dont get me wrong, I would have loved to deliver that much butter to her, she'd be set for years! lol.. But anyway, the load with the butter, was 1700 miles also, also delivering on sunday. So this customer service guy calls me before i was going to go inside, and we talked, and I expressed my concerns about how this load was the same tightness as the other one, and he asked if i'd be open for a swap. I said I'd do it as long as I still get ok miles. So literally I left the shipper, went and did the shower/bathroom/shave/eat thing at the flying j really quick along with fuel and weight, and then I drove 500 miles last night and stopped at this Loves, where I was meeting the team driver truck, and we traded off, and instead of me taking the butter to missouri, I'm taking this other load to south texas (good ol laredo). This morning when my time reset, I got up, ran in to use the bathroom, and took off about 7 am. Drove until roughly about 4pm, which puts me about 860 miles away as of tonight, and I stopped at this pilot. I will be back on the road again by 4AM, and then stop again by 2pm, and then do the final stretch to laredo getting there probably by 7am monday morning. But that puts me at like 2500 miles for the week so far, and if I can get loaded monday with something between 500-1000 miles delivering by wednesday night, I think I will be good to go. In conclusion, tonight I FINALLY updated my facebook info. Now it has on there that i'm an otr truck driver, and it no longer has me listed in clinton, but now in philly. ON that note, my comptuer batter is about to die, so I have to sign off. (gotta remember to have it charge while I'm driving tomorrow. I love power inverters. it's easier to run them while the engine is running, so it works out best if i do them while i'm traveling. So on that note! Talk to you guys again soon! **Also! More pictures of awesome cakes on Erin's Blog! Check them out!