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It's been a cold past couple of days. And i'm not just talking "oh man its so nippy out here!" HELL NO! I'm talking 5 minutes outside and you're freezing your ass off. Like, sub zero temperature cold. And that's not even the worst part! Sub 0 isn't terrible, WITHOUT WIND!" WITH wind, it's freaking miserable! And lately theres high winds, so 0 degrees turns to -20 or worse. So cold that last night I didn't idle the engine, I ran my bunk heater. The bunk heater kept the inside of the truck warm enough that I didn't 'freeze', but I still woke up pretty cold. The engine actually sputtered pretty bad at first when it first started up. Apparently when it's down below 15 degrees we are supposed to leave the truck running. I guess diesel fuel can gel up if it gets cold enough.

So, yesterday was so fun. *NOT!* Delivered at 8:30, met up with Erin to get my keys for my car (long story.actually not really.. i'm just lazy).. Then drove 25 miles south to do a pick up, then went back towards carlisle and went south to york to deliver, then drove 25 more miles, picked up, then it was 100 miles to delaware to deliver. Of course, I was supposed to go from there to burlington to do a pick up to come to ohio for a bj's run, but I was looking at my hours and thinking "shit I'm running tight on hours." So I called my dbl and talked to him about it. He basically said "i know it's gonna be tight, but that load has to deliver by midnight tonight, and it looks like you have the hours to get it there." So, I got it there, and I had 20 minutes on my time when I arrived. I saw a rest area 15 miles north that I figured if I had to, I would run over on my hours and be in violation if I had to but I would come up there to that rest area.

When I got to the procter and gamble in delaware, I asked the guard if there was any place close that I could bobtail park. Basically he recommended the rest area that I had taken notice of anyway, so I thought "ok, well there's my answer." When I left there, I was already negative on time but it couldn't be helped. I drove the 15 miles north and parked.

This morning when I was 15 miles from burlington, I got a message from my DBL asking me to call. I pulled over and called, and he mentioned the log violation and was like "when you got to procter, there wasn't any parking?" I was like "nope, I asked, they recommended the rest area that I parked at. It was the closest place." He was like "oh, ok, good, well I just wanted to make sure. We never like violations but we understand that sometimes they happen and can't be avoided."

Of course I thought "i could have avoided it if I stopped and delivered in the morning" but of course I didn't say that. If I had to do it all over again I would just deliver late and not run into that issue with the hours. My dbl was worried that going from there, 90 miles to burlington, that I wouldn't have enough hours to get from burlington up here to ohio. Well, I had almost the whole 90 miles to drive to burlington this morning, and I still made it here to ohio with an hour and a half on my time. I even stopped for fuel and stopped to take my DOT break which is normally a half hour but tonight I did 45 minutes because I had to make a phone call.

So here I am in Ohio, been here since like, 830. Layed in the bunk doing the publishers clearing house entries online, and then on facebook for a little while, and then I thought "i better get online and see if I need to do anything for school tonight". Thankfully since today is the first day back from our two week winter break, there was nothing yet. So, last but not least, before logging off the computer and going back to the ipad, I wanted to come on here and blog.

Course, tonight I've left my truck running the whole time I've been here. So, I'm still just sitting here. I'm pretty sure that soon there will be someone coming out and taking the seal off the trailer and telling me to go ahead and back into door two, but for now I'm just waiting. There's a ton of snow out here. They apparently got hammered bad the other day.

So anyway, that'll be all tonight. I hope you are doing well. Have a good night and God Bless!

C