Beat The Heat!

Wow it's been hot! I of course was stuck in south texas for at least 2 days this time, and oh boy oh boy was it a hot one! I'm talking temperatures of 106 degrees outside! I think I already mentioned in another post how I would literally walk from the truck to the customer's building to check in, and within those 5 minutes or less, I would be drenched. It's like HOLY CRAP! And of course, with that kind of heat, there's no way I can hang out in my sleeper bunk in my truck without having my engine idling so that the ac keeps flowing. That's why I have been on the hunt for the past week or two looking for anything that would go in the "portable ac" category. Basically, let me explain it like this. When it's cold outside, I have this spaceheater built into the truck, and i can keep the truck warm and only use like 3/4 a gallon of diesel fuel in 12 hours. That's a cost I can handle. However, to idle the engine to run the ac, I use 1 gallon of fuel every hour, and typically if I idle, it's when the sun is out and then when it gets dark and the sun is not beating down on me, I will go ahead and shut it off, and if the night cools down to at least between 70-80, then I usually sleep ok. But the last few nights, I get to sleep ok, but then the temp only got between 80-90 at night and so in the morning I wake up hot. I hate being hot! Ask Erin, I'm a heater. I would take being cold any day because 1) i sleep great because I just wrap myself in my huge blanket, and 2) you can always put more stuff on to warm up, but in the heat you can only take so much off. Eventually you are completely naked and yet still sweating your butt off, then what? Can't take off more clothes if there are none! :P So I'm going to post a picture of what I just ordered:

The image above is what I call a "portable AC". I debated over the last few days whether to buy it or not, but if it saves me from having to run my engine and using extra fuel, then I think it is a good idea, so tonight I went ahead and ordered it with the idea that hopefully it will arrive sometime by the end of this next week so that I will be able to get it when I get home for home time. Basically what it is, it's a cooler. The cooler can be used as a simple cooler, but then the blue lid attachment you see there is the cool air part. It has a plug that I can plug into my 12volt plugs that I have here in the truck. It has two different fans. One takes warm air in, and the other blows cool air out. Based on what the information the offer on this product, it was invented to be used with these types of boats and tents that have like 15 or whatever feet of square feet inside, and it cooled about 30 or more degrees below the outside air temperature. Plus I checked out what bags of ice cost earlier and on average I noticed that for a 10lb bag of ice it was 3.00, which is not bad. Compare that to a gallon of diesel per hour. Diesel right now is around $4.00 per gallon unless you go to the east or west coast, and then it's like $4.40 or so per gallon that I pay for, and so if i can go through one bag of ice to keep cool for my 10 hour sleeper reset, versus over $40.00 in fuel, to me it seemed like a no-brainer. The only concern I had was that to spend the purchase price plus shipping was a good portion of what funds I had available to me right now, but then I parked at the truck stop for the night, and right away I was noticing that even though here in Arkansas, it's 85 outside and not 100, it's still heating up the truck pretty good, so I thought two things. 1) if I didn't get it and try it out, I would basically just be sleeping as well as possible even though I'd be hot. 2) it is technically something i'm buying for the truck so it will lessen how much taxes I pay out and I will also be able to write it off as a business expense. To check out what else they have, go to the link below. :)

CLICK HERE!

Little side note before going on, they have a ton of stuff from this portable ac/cooler, to what I like to call "cool-bands" which are basically bandanas that if memory serves from when I had one while ref'ing soccer, you put the bandana in water, it has these beads or something inside that make it absorb the water making the bandana puff up, and then you put the puffed up bandana in the fridge and let it cool off. Then when you're out in the heat, you wrap it around your neck and it helps you stay cool. Or you even don't have to put it in the fridge (that's just what I did when I ref'd soccer because i was normally out in the heat all day so the colder it was at the start, the longer it lasted). But it works to cool you off with the evaporating moisture from the bandana. It's something that I have a feeling when Erin checks out this site she will probably see things that will be great for our girls with them being in soccer and the summer months approaching and what not. So check it out!

So I'm currently headed to New York. I swore up and down that next time they try to assign a small load of 150 miles or something like that, I'm going to decline right away. I still might, but they redeemed themselves a little bit. When I say they, i mean CR england. Basically after running that load there, then coming 150 miles 'back' to Laredo (which I wasn't happy about), and then they asked me to do a local delivery (basically the trailer I was delivering was empty but they wanted me to deliver it to this one customer, and pick up a different trailer that was empty) They wanted me to have the other empty trailer washed out because apparently it was not in good shape. They weren't lying either. Looked like it had been in a few accidents, was dented in a few places, and i opened one of the trailer doors and flies everywhere and the trailer was covered in blood. I'm guessing it had a meat load and of course some of it ran, which I don't get because meat loads usually are transported at freezing temps so there shouldn't have been blood running anywhere. So I took it to the truck wash, and they washed it out, and then I went to pick up the load with that trailer that I was assigned at that point in time which was going to Iowa. To Cedar Rapids to be exact. So I get to the place, and they tell me "oh no, the appointment is tomomrrow!" I called dispatch and their like "it's for today!" I go back there again and try to confirm and their like "it's for tomorrow. Come back tomorrow." So I go to the truck stop, and come back the following morning by 10:45 AM. The appointment wasn't until 3pm, and although dispatch said 'go there at 8am', i know that chances are if you are 'very' early for your appointment, you are still going to have to wait, so i figured I would try to sleep in, but haha, with the heat I woke up around 8:30 and couldn't go back to sleep cuz I was so hot I had to turn the truck on to cool off. (I guess that'll change soon with my new ac cooler eh? ;) ) So I go over to the customer, find out what dock i'm at, I go over and get backed into the dock, and I get a message saying "bring the load over to the yard when you get it" I was like "what's going on?" and then the load planner calls me and tells me that they are having a team driver come meet me, I'm going to drop the trailer at the dock when they get there and the team driver will take over (since it was 1200 mile by the following afternoon, which if I left on wednesday I coulda done it, but leaving thursday and getting there on friday? wasn't possible for me as a solo.) So I was like "ah, ok, so what do you want me to do after they take over?" She was like "Bobtail over here to the yard and we have several loads here in the yard that you can pick from." I was like "great! I will see you soon!" So about 2 hours later, I was still docked and hadn't been loaded and the team showed up. I dropped the trailer and left, and headed back over to the laredo yard, and they offered me that 1800 mile load. So here i am! I've grown and learned since I've been out here though. I'm all for helping, but now I think i'm more willing to say no. For example, this morning a cr england customer service person calls me and says "we need you to pick up a student in dallas and take them to new york with you and drop them off." I thought about it for a minute (because I really do not like the idea of taking random people on my truck. I think i work better as a solo. Now, if I had someone I care for like a close friend, or family member, etc riding with me that'd be different, but just random people that I should pick up and give them a ride?) I was like "I'll be honest, I'd love to help, but I don't work well with others on the truck." he was like "of course it's your choice, if you don't want to, you don't have to and I will just see if I can find someone else in the area." So I was like "then , yeah I'm going to have to say no. I'm sorry, I just can't do it." He was like "no big deal. Thanks anyway." And hung up. I mean, think about it, this is basically my home away from home. I don't want just "anyone" in here.. lol.. not that i'm a slob (despite what my parents might tell you.. ;) but it's like my own personal appartment. I work here, I sleep here, I eat here. And the big thing for me is when I was on here with my trainer, if he was in back with the curtain closed, I drove really well.....when he joined me up front, suddenly i was grinding gears and all sorts of screw-ups, so that's why any time they've pushed for me to take on a student and train, i'm like "nooooooooooooooo wwwwwwwwwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay.. not interested!" No matter how much they tried to guilt me by saying "we're a team here! We help eachother!" And i'm like "that's great! You take on students and help out. I'm a SOOOLLLLOOO DRIVER!"

lol.. so yeah, that's pretty much it for now. Like I said, they have a lot of realy cool products so check them out! I'm going to call that it for tonight, later all! C

oy HTML

Short addition here. I just realized that although I might put a few spaces between paragraphs, because I didn't put the < BR > in there (without the spaces of course), basically i noticed when I went to the blog frontpage that all paragraphs were running together. So I edited the last few blogs with those to make them a bit more clear and neat. I'm not going to go through all the blogs, but I will try to make sure I remember those breaks when I post from here on so that everything comes out looking the way I intended. Happy reading everyone. :)

TIs a hot one today aye? ;)

So I'm still in route to Laredo from Colorado, but I'm almost there. Before I go into that, for whatever reason (i don't know honestly, it could be that while out here on the road, my mind goes into these random fits of randomness and weirdness.....yes..i know i'm already weird so how much more weird could i get right? well as my beautiful wife would say..shaddup!.. JK! you don't have to.. Well anyway, what I was saying was randomly today there was something I planned to start my blog entry off with tonight. Here goes..

Letter To the Site

Dear Blogspot,

First of all, I wanted to say how fast you are going today. I never seem to have any trouble with the site lagging when I'm trying to write my entry, and for that I thank you. My computer is slower anyway being that it is a netbook, so when I'm trying to type something and there's a delay between when I hit the keys and when it appears on the screen, as you might imagine, I get quite anoyed. Of course it's not directed at you, so no need to worry. Also, just, thank you. I understand very well how I can be, and how when others might be telling me their problems, I might not quite hear them and instead I go on about my own problems. Not you though blogspot, you have always been there, always listening, and I appreciate that. No matter what, I know I can come here to this safe haven and write about anything that is going on in my wacky head, and what I love about you the most is, you won't leave. You never judge. You never criticize. You never tell me that I should have done things a certain way, or that I need to parent in a certain way. Nope, not you, you simply are there for me and listen when I need you, so Thank you.

Sincerely, one of your biggest fans!

Chris

Yes people, like I said, I'm all sorts of weird and I don't care if anyone reads this and goes "omg, he's like so totally weird!" Well i say to that "well, like what-eva!" :P

So an update on the current trip. I finally got out of colorado around 10AM, and I had figured that I would stop at one of the same truck stops I stopped at when I was going from texas to colorado. But when my time was getting down there to the last hour and a half, and I was getting closer to where the truck stops were, following the directions down to laredo from co, it took me on a different highway. Once I realized I was like "oh shit..." And lucky me! The highway I was on didn't have ANY truck stops for about oh,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, about 120 miles, which I didn't have the time to get to, so I was driving down the interstate looking at my time, and at my gps, and at the exits and thinking "ok, I have to find a safe spot to pull over". USually as long as the service road beside the highway, or the onramp or something have enough of a shoulder, I can usually find a place. So when I had 10 minutes left on my DOT time, I finally said "i'm getting off on the next exit and seeing what it's like. It was this farm town exit with wide open fields near by, no houses, no vehical traffic really, and the on ramp was about half a mile long with a couple of curves. So I curved two or three times and got on a 50 yard straight stretch, and got out and walked over to the grass on the side of the road to see if there was a dip or if it was solid. Thankfully it was solid, so I was able to pull off the road to where there was still a space and a half beside me on the road. The only concern i had was that I was leaning a few degrees to the right, but it turned out fine. I covered my windows up, and talked to erin and the girls on video chat, and went to sleep. Got up this morning around 7 *since that was when my 10 hours were up*, actually i woke up around 6:30, so I put on another episode of Vampire Diaries on netflix *since that is the current series I'm working on now since I finished doctor who and they aren't putting new ones up for a bit... But I figured I'd watch one episode while I was waiting till my time had reset, and till my 15 minutes for doing my pretrip were logged, and then I took off. I am trying to use my time sparingly so that as I get however many hours back at midnight each night, i'm hoping I will always have an ok number of hours so that I can get loaded and take off. I could have taken off in colorado the previous day, but I was only getting 3 hours back that night and when i stopped, I had 2.5 hours from that day, so basically I would have had 5.5 hours total to work with for a load until getting 10+ the following night, so my dm (driver manager) figured it would be better for me to just deliver that load in colorado and then get loaded the following day when I had better hours. So tonight, I had enough time to make it all the way to my drop, but two things were on my mind that I was taking into account. 1) the hours, trying to use about 8 hours yesterday and today to let a few extra hours trickle into my 70 hour limit. Obviously last night because of not being able to do anything about the truck stop issue, i went longer than 8 hours, but today, around my 8 hour mark I saw a sign for a loves with a Mcdonalds. Haven't had mcdonalds in forever. *God Bless the Dollar Menue! especially when you only have a few bucks on ya!* ;) So I looked on my app on my phone to see what other truck stops were coming up since I figured I wasn't going to drive all the way tonight, I saw that after this loves, there was not another truck stop for another about 70 miles, which was fine, but it really came down to either stop at loves earlier than at the other one, and be able to get a few dollar menue items for dinner, or wait, stop at the flying j, and be able to take care of the showering and all that fun stuff tonight. So, I decided to stop at the loves and that there's a flying j right next to laredo that I stopped at last time. I will take care of business there. Food was the bigger motivator here! ;) The #2 thing I considered was my appointment time isnt until 7am tomorrow. I thought I had to be there by 7 am, so when I backed into a spot here at loves and was doing my 15 minute post trip inspection, i looked at my messages and saw that the appointment time is between 7AM and 10AM. So i had already set my alarm for 2:45, because I'm 3 hours away, but since I don't have to be there until between those two times, I put my alarm for 4:45 and figured that would get me there some time just after 8AM, which works out fine for me, plus it gave me time to get online, do my school posts, come on here and do this blog, and eat, and I plan to watch a few episodes of vampire diaries when I get off here. Unlike erin, I haven't read all the books from this series. The main ones I HAVE read were the stephens diaries, which I thought were awesome, but it definitely left me wanting more. However, when watching these last few episodes, I know what they are talking about when they backtrack to the 1800's and i can go "i remember that!" lol..

So on that note, I will let you all go! Talk to you guys again soon. Be safe... God Bless!

C

PS One other thing that i find interesting. People (either friends or family) telling other people what they should be doing better with raising their kids. While I was driving I was having this weird little convo with myself as if I was talking to someone who had made suggestions to us about our kids, and in my mind, it was a relative and I sat down with this person, and said "look at ally. What do you think of her, is she a good kid?" "well yes of course, she's wonderful." "ok, then is she dirty?" "no." "is her hair a mess?" "no." "Ok, well, does she get to school?" "Yes of course, what kind of questions are these?" "just bear with me. now, is she involved with extra curricular activities or sports or anything?" "You know that she is...shes in soccer!" "alright, well, does she get fed?" "Yes." "And does she have clothes that are in good shape and are clean?" "Yes." "And what about her attitude, for the most part do you think she's respectful?" "Yes she is. Obviously she has her bad days, but she's respectful." "Ok, well then my last question, does she have a place to live?" "Of course she does." "ok, then my question to you after all that would be, you basically pointed out that she has everything she needs provided for her, she's respectful, she's already grown so much into a beautiful young lady, she's respectful, clean, taken care of, etc. So why do you think it's necesary for you to give us advise on things you think she should do less of, or what we are doing wrong, when you just pointed out that we aren't doing it wrong? Can you do me a favor and not worry about our kids and if they do too much of things like chores, or anything like that? Obviously, being the loving and responsible parents that we are, we are doing what we have always done, which is to do our best to make sure that not only are our children loved and receive the best that we can possibly give them, but we are also teaching them about responsibility so that when they get older and begin their own lives outside of the home, they will have the basic knowledge. Please just let us worry about how to raise our own kids the way that we have been doing, which is obviously doing the trick. Ok?" "alright. I'm sorry." "Thank you." Keep in mind, this convo didn't actually happen anywhere but in my daydreaming head. :P But, that's the kind of stuff that when I'm out here all alone, I find my mind wondering circles and i can easily stress about the smallest things, but hey,that's why i'm here! ;) Have a good night you guys and talk to you later.

Off to Colorado!

Well at least this time I wasn't stuck in Texas for 4 days waiting to get loaded. lol. This time I went to Laredo, and then I got loaded for a load to Dallas (about 450 miles), but it was due the following morning, so I automatically knew I would be driving a grave yard shift. Those are never fun. I don't mind the drive shifts where I get up at like 3AM and on the road by 4, because then I'm done by like 1 or 2 in the afternoon and it was half dark and half light for the shift. Where as, this monday evening, I forced myself to try to go to sleep around like 4pm, and by 10:30 I was up and getting things together. By 11:30 I was headed over to the CR England drop yard because thats where I was picking up the load from. Basically I was dropping my empty trailer there and picking up a loaded one and then taking off for dallas. By the time I got the trailer and hit the road, it was about 1AM. When I got to dallas, I made it there about 8:30 or so, and of course as I got in town with the traffic and the constant turn offs (i mean turn offs as in get off one highway onto another, exit off that one back onto the one you just came on, etc). And the problem with driving throughout the whole night is no matter how rested I am, I always get to a point where I start zoning because since it was dark the whole time, my body obviously wants to go in back and go to sleep, but my mind is saying "nope, you cant. Get this load there safely and then go lay down."

So as I was saying, as I got in town with the many distractions (on top of me being really tired), Erin texts me, and I simply replied back "i'm in dallas. 30 minutes" implying that i'm too tired and distracted, let me get where I'm going and I can talk. lol. Didn't want to risk it. So I was assigned a load from laredo that, after I dropped off the dallas load, I was supposed to pick up a dallas load and head to washington state. Was like 2,000 miles. was like "sweet!" Especially after they took the other good load off my truck. But then when I woke up monday night to get ready to leave, they had taken that one from me as well. I was like "wth man?! I accepted this shorter load because you told me I would get a good reload, and then you take it away?!" So they said "oh we will get you something good. don't worry." So I get the load to dallas, Im sitting there waiting to be unloaded, dozing off as I sit here in the truck, and my qualcomm computer chirps and apparently i have a message. It's a load assignment! WOOHOO! Wait a minute! 35miles?!?!?! Are you freaking shitting me!?? lol. yup, that's right, they tried to assign me a load that had come from new jersey, was dropped in irving, and was due in dallas that night. I messaged my dm and told him 2 things. 1) I wasn't going to make any money on that load, and 2) since I was down near empty, I would need fuel and so i would actually end up losing money. He messaged back that he was trying to figure out what was going on. He then said "call me asap."

So I call him and i'm like "mike, don't they have company drivers for that reason?" He was like "yes they do, but apparently they don't work that late and so when this is supposed to be delivered, they have nobody to do it. The planner is saying if you will take it over for us, he will pay you a $75.00 delivery bonus plus he promises to get you a really good load out." I was like "mike, I will be honest with you. I'm a bit skeptical because two times in the past day now I've had what was supposed to be my 'really good load' taken back from my truck, so how is this time going to be any different?" He was like "i know, I don't know why they took your washington load off."

So when I finally got out of the customer, I had only like 30 minutes of time left and so I messaged mike saying "i'm off duty driving over to the truck stop, going to get a bite and probably end up going to sleep because I am so freaking exhausted! I would take that deal with the local delivery for the $75 but I don't think I'm going to have hours back before the load is late." Later on, about 3 hours later, he messaged for me to call him and I did, and he said that the planner really still wanted us to take it, and was still offering the bonus. Seeing that I would reset around 8PM and the load wasn't due till 10, I told him "alright I'll take it for you as long as I see that message with the AR for the $75!" I was basically giving up about 3 hours that I could have been asleep early and catching up, to help them out, but my thought process was "the more I'm willing to help them out, the more mike seems to get me really good loads, and so as long as they hold up what they say their going to do, I will do what I can to help them out. So I got the load delivered last night probably 11pm, i was an hour late, but 10 minutes before 10 I was 15 miles away and so I sent my arrival call and so according to the computer systems I actually was on time. The problem was my GPS got lost... LMAO (or got me lost. however you want to look at it). What happened was the street name that the customer was on happened to be the same name of a street in a rich neighborhood. So the gps said "arriving at destination!" and I look around and all i see are these huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge houses. I'm like "ummmmmmm... i'm thinking i'm in the wrong place!" But of course, i wouldn't have seen them very much at that point in the night because it was so dark. Had it been day time I would have probably known it was wrong. So I looked at the local directions, and I key the last highway into my gps. Basically it said to take 35W south, and exit 56A, so I put fort worth, and that highway in my gps hoping that it would at least get me to that highway, and thankfully it did! Then I went only 5 exits before I found the right one and WALAH! i was there! When I checked in, they were deciding on what door i should dock at and I said "if you have a doc that is pretty open with not too many people around, that'd be great! i haven't slept much in the past 24 hours and I don't want to risk it." So they put me in a dock that literally had nobody for a few spaces from it. lol. I was like "sweet!"

They got me unloaded quick, but then told me "wait in your truck, we will call you when your paperwork is ready." So here i am laying in back, thinking "if they don't hurry up i'm going to fall asleep here at the dock." I was noticing that the street that went by the customer was a really wide street and a few trucks had parked down near the end of the street where there was this big circle turn around area, they basically went down, turned around, and parked on the side of the street for the night. So before I had even finished being unloaded, I was divising a plan (yes I'm sure divising is not spelled correctly.) I was thinking "hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm... I don't want to drive out from here, so I think I will go park behind them when I'm done and go to sleep!" Well, i did end up dozing off in the truck. I don't know if I heard my phone ring, or something else woke me up, or whatever, because i don't even remember being layed down in bed, but suddenly I was sitting up, and I had grabbed my phone and was staring at it for probably 5 minutes before I reallized "oh, my phone... OH! MY PHONE! heeeeeeey cool, a missed call.." So I called the number back and they were like "yup, your paperwork is ready, come get it!" I was like "ok." So I get my paperwork, and then I get back to the truck and drive over, park behind the trucks on the street (the street was out of the way so the only traffic were any trucks that were coming down to deliver).... Closed up my trailer doors, covered my windows, climbed back in my sleeper cab and went to sleep. The next morning, I went back inside so I could hit their restroom, and then I drove the 12 miles to the pickup for my current load.

My current load is going to colorado, so I didn't complain because it's about 750 miles. Not the 2,000 I had before, but 750 is decent. Plus it delivers by tomorrow night, so i did part of the drive tonight (about 7 hours worth) and then I will do about 5 and 1/2 hours in the morning and be there by 1 or 2 pm. If i'm lucky (and here's hoping) my dm will have me route to the local drop yard so I can leave this loaded trailer there and pick up another load going from there to somewhere else. He's looking into that with the load planner and it's awesome when i can do that because instead of waiting around so I can deliver, I literally drop the load, pick up my loaded trailer, and take off again. It keeps me rolling, and that's definitely important. A little over 2 weeks till i'm scheduled for home time just after Ally's birthday. She's turning 11. I giver her crap and say things like "sooooo ,,, you excitited? Big 10!!!" She's like "ddaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad!!! i'm turning 11!!!" I'm like "9?!?!?! What do you mean 9!?" She's like "11!!!!" "8?!" lmao. Yup, i'm weird. ;)

So anyway, to close this off, I was going to maybe do another 100 miles or so, but this stretch i've been on tonight goes a ways between rest areas or truck stops. So when i got to this point and I saw a few truck stops right next to eachother, and it was 9 oclock, I thought, "i'm probably good for the night. Might as well stop while I know I have a place to," and pulled into the Loves Travel Center, and backed into a space. Went in to get a bite and use the rest rooms, and then came out to do my school posts really quick and figured better do my blog update! :) That's about it for now, more later!

Imagine this! For those of you who might be doctor who fans, imagine a cake that looks like the Tardis! If you're curious and interested in seeing what it might look like, you may get your chance in the next few weeks as that is what ally requested for her cake. I told Erin I thought that would probably be the coolest looking cake in her portfolio because I can visualize a cake that looks like a rectangular police call box with the little sign on the front and everything. Should be quite fascinating! Stay tuned to Erin's site if you'd like to see more! ;)

Nice and muggy back here in texas =)

So, did the load to utah, then the load to cali, then I took a load that was going to missouri, and swapped it in arizona to bring a load down here to Laredo, TX. Got in and out of the drop pretty quick today, and took the opportunity to go to the flying j locally and get the shower and what not out of the way. Got back to the truck and saw that I had a load assignment going to ga, but before i could accept it, they pulled it from the truck and gave me a 400 mile load going up to dallas. I messaged my dm and said "hey mike, what the heck? Why'd they remove that ga load?" Then he said "let me get with the planner. If they dont still have it, lets go ahead and take the one to dallas." I was like "if i do, is it possible to get a good load out of dallas?" and then a few minutes later, a load assignment popped up leaving from dallas, stopping in nevada for one drop, and then in washington state for the other drop. 2,000+ miles. I was like "ok, so mike let me make sure i'm clear... i take the load to dallas by tomorrow morning, and then I pick the one up going to washington, correct?" which the reason I was asking is because basically i figured I would be accepting two load assignments at the same time which doesnt happen that often. So i went ahead and accepted them both, because when looking at the directions, the directions for the wa load literally show from the location near dallas that I'm dropping off. So I thought "i can live with that. it gives me 400 miles to turn in with my 2400 miles this week, and it gives me over 2,000 miles towards the next week's pay period, which i would still have time to get another decent trip after that and probably hit 3,000. So, I will keep this one a little shorter as I just got off a looooooooooooong ass email written to my canadian friend, best friend, or best bud, or whatever would be the right term for her. It seems that as far as friends outside of my relationship with erin go, apparently mubs and I are pretty much best friends. Last night I had to walk away finally from who i used to consider my best friend. We had issues a while back, and i tried to make up for it but basically she flat out ignored me this past year while still saying "no we're definitely still friends." Well yesterday on facebook she said something on facebook that I felt "ok, i have to say something.." and what resulted was a nice little arguement between us, her saying that she did forgive me but that she didn't think she could rely on me to be there for her the way that she needed, etc etc. Then a friend of hers came on and literally ripped my head off with her words. Talked about how i was self centered, it was all about me, how dare i treat her friend that way, bla bla bla. I simply came back with: "look, sharon, 1) you don't know me, so go **** yourself! 2) half the stuff that you say I was not supportive to her when she was going through it, i have no idea what the hell you are talking about! She doesn't talk to me, so I had no idea that **** happened, or **** happened!" It's like, someone hating you and not wanting to be freinds with you because you didn't see their play, when you ignore them and they never knew there was even a play going on! But then to turn around and "I NEEDED YOU!!!! YOU WERENT THERE!" It's like "HUH?!!?! WHAT?!!?" So after I responded to her friend, my former friend came back in and posted that "gentlemen shouldn't use that kind of language with a lady, especailly a lady that is a friend of mine who is defending me." On the tip of my tongue, i almost said "well this friend of yours attacked me verbally, and i did not provoke her, so i will use whatever kind of language i like when i'm defending myself against such an unjust attack." But instead I simply just figured "i better walk away and end this before things get too bad." So I simply said "i'm gone, i will not message you anymore, or cause you anymore drama." Then on my way out of facebook I removed her and her family from my friends list. I figured, she has my number if she ever thinks " what have i done??!" and wants to try to make amends, but otherwise, I just cant bear to see posts on facebook anymore about how she thinks friends should do this or that, and keep feeling how it goes against how she acted with me when claiming to still be a friend, so better to just walk away!. There's my rant on that! Soooo... I''m down here in Laredo texas. Nice and muggy. When ever i get something to eat at a dennys in a flying j, normally I tip a $5 if I have enough. two times now, I've given like 2.50 for a tip. One other time, and then today. The waitress was nice and all, but she was odd. I got a half order of zesty nachos, and was still looking at what I wanted for my meal, and when she came with my nachos, she said "so are you going to order anything else or just the nachos?" I as like "actually yes, I would like the country fried steak please." I was a little bit taken aback how she asked me that. not "can i get you anything else?' or "are you ready to order?" but "are you going to get anything else or just that?" Then, yes she refilled my raspberry tea once, but then I never saw her again, and i had to ask another lady for the check, so initially i had a $5 out, but then i changed my mind, pulled out 2 $1's and 4 quarters. I thought "since she really wasn't around much, that seeemed good. especially for one meal and an appetizer." Always though, if the waitress goes above and beyond, usually i atleast tip $5. one time i think they came by every 5 minutes and as they were passing by, they were like "how's everything?" which I would give a thumbs up, and they'd keep on moving, and so i think that time I tipped a 5 plus like 2 1's, If you want to make good tips, i think you should definitely work hard to show that you're there for the customer. If you are only at the table twice and otherwise they have to call someone else over, then 2 or 3 bucks is good, but if you refill their glass a few times, and check in a few times, and are present then you definitely deserve a decent tip. Otherwise, you basically bring the meal, disapear, and get tipped, and although that's great, that's not as good for the customer. ;) So, looks like i'm driving a night shift tonight.. (oy...lol) But, hey, sometimes it's what I gotta do. I prefer to drive early morning day shift so that it's mid afternoon when I stop, but like this load to dallas is due by 8 am tomorrow, I have about 5 hours left till my time resets, and then i figure I will run over, pick up the load, and take off. when I do, i figure it will probably be 7am or so when I get there, and maybe they will get me in and out quick, and I can then go over to the pick up in dallas and at least get that one. If i get in and out quick at both, then i might be able to do a few hours drive time out of dallas before stopping for a 10 hour reset. If not, then I will get out of the one in dallas and have to wait my 10 somewhere close and then take off. We will see. Whatever happens, I will try to take a chancen to come on here and write all about it. =) So on that note, I will call that it for tonight, as I have to see if I can catch some good sleep before getting up late tonight to go get my load and take off with it. (did I mention i'm never thrilled about driving overnight? lol..meh.. oh well!) So talk to you all again soon.. C

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!

headed to utah with BEER! :P

LOL! Yup, that's right folks, 20 tons (or 40,000 lbs worth) of bud light is what I'm currently hauling. Hauling it from St Louis, MO, to Utah. Right now I'm at a truck parking area here in Wyoming. I was planning on going maybe another 60 miles, but I'm at a pretty good stopping point, and it was at sunset so literally i was driving west, looking right into the sun, which even with me wearing sun glasses, I was blinded. I couldn't see a damn thing! Signs were blurred until right as I was passing them, and I was holding a small book I have that shows where truck stops and rest areas are in the different states on the different highways in front of my face to try to block out the sun a bit. Basically last night I started with 1300 miles to go, and it was roughly about 4pm when I left the Annheiser Bush location with my load. I drove about 8 hours and started looking for a good place to stop. I tried stopping at a rest area but it was too small and so it was too packed and I don't like the idea of using my long truck and taking up regular car parking spaces, so I kept going and found this large gas station that serviced cars and rv's and in my book it said it was also a truck stop. As I got off the highway and pulled in, i noticed they had a huuuuuuuuge open lot connected to their lot and it said "truck parking only!" on it, and there was already another semi parked there with their windows covered, so I swung around and parked beside them and before an hour went by, there were two other trucks that swung around and parked beside me. None of them stayed long, I think I was the main one that stayed through the night *mainly because it was midnight when I parked and I have to take 10 hours off in order for my driving time to reset back to 11 hours. (deals with the department of transportation and their rules). So, I set my alarm for the 10 hour mark, which because I had gone to central time, I set my alarm for 9:15, and then literally I got up earlier than that, and hit the rest rooms, grabbed my package of pop tarts and hit the road as soon as my time was back to 11. came up from missouri, into iowa literally for about 20 minutes, and then across the state line into Nebraska. I was like "damn that was a quick trip through Iowa!" So I came up a little bit into nebraska, connected with Interstate 80 west, and was on that for the past 6 hours or so. I had scheduled a sleep stop about 4 hours back at a flying j, but with how late i left yesterday, I basically ended up going about an hour or so past where i had planned to stop yesterday, and so today I needed to get a little bit farther than my scheduled sleep stop. It would have left me with over 600 miles still left to go, and although it could have been done because this load isnt due in till tuesday morning, my plan when I left with it saturday was to get to the drop by late monday morning, and right now Im on track for that. here's hoping they will take me when I get there. Otherwise guess what! I get to sit around and wait till they will take me. I could have been there already, but when I tried to leave to pick up my tennessee load early, and get it to illinois by friday night, they said "oh, your appointment isn't until from 10:30 am saturday to 10:30 am sunday, so the soonest we can take you is tomorrow morning." So I left, went to the closest rest stop and found a space, used the bathroom, did my homework really quick, and went to bed. I was so tired that night because I had really had quite a long day. Not to mention, with different stresses in life right now, especially financial although erin and I are working on it and things are improving and will continue to get better, but that day was a low day for me. I just felt like complete and utter crap,and I couldn't pin point the specific reason for it. But once I got to tennessee, got my load and headed back up, I felt a little better. Maybe part of my stress is the "getting lost" part of the job, and ending up in parts of towns where i really shouldn't be because of how long of a truck i am. I have had quite a few close calls, but thankfully after that minor accident I had before going home for home time, I have managed to avoid having anything else happen, so for those of you reading *however many there are. ;)* please keep me in your prayers. The Lord has indeed watched out for me since I have been back out on the road, and as long as I take my time, plan my trip, and just don't be in too big of a hurry, I have been doing fine. I honestly right now, with being parked in a huge empty lot that has spaces for trucks and nothing else, I honestly don't mind lots like this. As long as I have stopped recently to take care of business, which I did when I stopped at flying j, I hit the showers and restroom, and used the money I had left on me to get two large slices of pizza for $5, and another gallon of water, and some tea and 2 packages of poptarts to hopefully get me through till a paycheck hits on thursday. But back to me not being able to see because of the sun! I kept driving down the road thinking "i will keep a look out and not push too far" I had 2 hours left of time, so I wasn't dangerously close, and then through the haze and sun I spotted a sign that said "truck parking 3/4 mile" So I got off on that exit, and literally at the bottom of this exit, it's right by a bridge, and I look around and I'm like "ok where is it?" And I notice there's this huge lot. Probably about the size of 3/4 of a football field, and there were about 3 trucks already parked there. It had lines for spaces already on the pavement and everything, but no facilities obviously, so I circled around and parked. Did a quick walk around my truck, utilized a bush near by if you know what I mean, and covered my windows up to darken the inside of my truck and got ready for bed and here i am! Had to do my class stuff first, and read erin's blog. If there are any new readers out there, definitely check out Erin's blog! ;) So other than that, i have my alarm set for around 5:30 am, which is when I should be good to drive again. I learned the hard way a few times already where I tried to go my full 11 hours and when I got to about 40 minutes left, I then started looking for a place to stop. A few times when I did this, i got hit with heavy traffic, or there were no places to stop, and I got a log violation. So now I use that book, and I try to plan my stops and usually it works out. If it doesnt, then I use that book to see what places are coming up and i pick the one that looks like it might be the largest and most accessible. I avoid backing whenever possible. Always pull through if you can! What can I say! I figure, I want to be out here doing my job and not having any incidents. If I have an incident, get lost, whatever, the stress level literally blows the top off my roof and it sucks. Then I kick myself for the entire day. So, better I do what I can to avoid it and not stress myself out. Why do I stress myself out so easily in the first place? I honestly have no idea. Im just a worry wort! Erin knows how I am. ;) So on that note, talk to you all next time!