6/30/07

Well, the past couple of days have been... a couple of days.

I took a wrong exit on my way into Newark and wound up on a pretty skinny stretch of road. I thought the sign said to stay right for the turnpike, but apparently left was the way to go. I followed that road until I got to where I thought I was supposed to be, but nothing looked the way I expected. Rather than drive in circles and run the risk of getting into a sticky spot, I hopped the turnpike north, did a flip, and went back south to the exit I was originally looking for.

This time I saw the signs that my directions referred to. The only catch was that the directions were a little confusing from that point forward. I wound up driving around in circles for another half hour, then found the location. The drop and hook was uneventful, so I was quickly on my way to Pennsylvania.

I sat parked on I-80 for a good hour and a half in New Jersey. My CB is broken, so I don't know exactly what happened, but I have to assume there was an accident that took a while to clean up. As a result, my night got a whole lot longer than expected. I found a quiet spot to sleep outside Wilkes-Barre and called it a night.

I headed over to my shipper today and made another drop/hook. By the time I was loaded I was getting awfully hungry, so I made a fuel stop and grabbed some food. All of the hard running this week and the traffic jams have pretty much left me in log book purgatory, so today was a pretty short day after that. I have no hours left for tomorrow, so I'm stuck in Ohio until midnight Eastern. I am scheduled to deliver at 8:30am Central on Monday and I'm just about nine and a half hours from the customer, so I'll keep my fingers crossed and hope for no delays. I should make it on time, but I'll have to get past St. Louis at rush hour. I'll be able to go around Columbus and Indianapolis in the middle of the night, so St. Louis should be my only obstacle. I usually obey the 55mph speed limits in Ohio and Illinois, but I will most likely go a little closer to 60mph on this trip. I'll still be the slowest truck on the road.