8/20/07

Houston, good bye and good riddance. Texas, good bye and good riddance. South, good bye and good riddance. Of course, now that I've said that, I'll end up catching some crap back to El Paso in a couple of days, but for now I'm headed to the Midwest where I belong.

I got into Houston in the middle of the night, which is always a good move. The traffic can get quite snarled during the day. My directions to the first drop related to I-10, but I came in on I-45 so I had to come up with my own approach. A couple of the streets I chose looked pretty major on a map, but looked pretty tiny in person. No biggie though, at 3am you can get away with that sort of thing most of the time.

I checked in with the security guard at the customer and he told me to park by the other trucks. I set my alarm for 8am (my time) as my appointment was for 8am Central. At 6:30 (my time) the dude woke me up and told me to open the doors. I'm pretty sure I was sailing somewhere through outer space at that point, but I managed to pull it together enough to make sure I was at the right dock. My instructions said, "Door 52 or 60." Both of those doors had trucks in front of them, so I was parked at door 50. He told me that it was 52 or 50 and I was good to go. More miscommunication from the CSR's, par for the course.

After I got empty there, I headed to the second drop, maybe five miles away. I was on the eastbound beltway service drive and made a boneheaded decision to use the U-turn lane to go back westbound, where my customer was located. In El Paso and Laredo, the U-turn lanes are cut out for big trucks. Not so in Houston. I didn't hit anything, but it was a lot closer than I would have liked. I had to run the trailer tires across the corner of a curb. That's not a huge deal if handled carefully, but next time I'll be taking the long way around.

My second appointment was scheduled, according to the master communicators upstairs in Joplin, for 11am Central. According to my paperwork, it was for 10am Central. I showed up at 7:30am Central. Nobody home. I set my alarm and laid back down. Whatever I was dreaming about (and I have no idea what that was), it came to involve a distant clanging sound. After a minute or two, I snapped out of dreamland and realized that the clanging sound was real. Instead of coming out to wake me up, the lazy peckerhead at the dock was banging something on the side of my trailer to let me know he was there. So again, pulled forward, opened the doors, got unloaded, usual routine.

The shipper's instructions required that I fax the bills with the first and last names of the persons on duty at each consignee once I was empty. The nearest sensible place to go was the Flying J on I-45, just north of the beltway. That was Mr. Joe's first and last visit to the Flying J on I-45, just north of the beltway. What a freaking zoo. One would think that, late in the morning, the place would be relatively calm. No way, it was jam-packed. I found a spot, completely botched my setup, and held up traffic for a few minutes while I got myself squared away. Shortly after sending my fax the next beep came over my communications system.

I was to head back to the general neighborhood I had just left and... wait for it... it's coming... almost there... ACTUALLY DRIVE FOR THE NEXT COUPLE OF DAYS. Holy shit, after the way the last week has gone I had forgotten what it was like to have more than one day of work lined up. I'm headed to the suburbs of Chicago where I'll drop off Wednesday morning. This latest dispatch will mean that, six days into the pay period, I'll be at 2,763 miles, with hours to run, and out of the South. Gotta love it. Just when I was ready to go home and get drunk for a day or two, they've actually got me feeling like a driver again. I won't have to put in for home time just to break the routine, so my 20 days are still in the bank.

I have a long day ahead of me tomorrow, crossing Arkansas and then angling up through Missouri and into Illinois. I probably should have gone a little further tonight, but I'm trying to wind up a couple of hours out of Chicago tomorrow. That way I'll have a good shot at finding a place to park for the night.