8/26/07

Do people routinely remember their absolute first thought upon waking up in the morning? I usually don't, but today was an exception. My first thought today was exactly, "Holy shit! What is happening !?!" I was pretty sure we were under a nuclear attack or something. As it turns out, some guy with an old piece of shit reefer just pulled in next to me at 5am and woke me up. Guess my primo parking spot wasn't so great after all. That thing sounded like the tornado sirens that small towns have.

So, in a pretty severe stupor, I scrambled around trying to find my earplugs. I didn't think to turn the light on. Dumbass. Once I got them in, the noise wasn't completely blocked but it was enough to let me fall back asleep for a few more hours.

Today was one of those days where I sometimes have discipline and/or motivation problems. I had to drive five hours, and the DOT says I had fourteen hours to do so. I was dispatched to arrive at midnight and I left at 10:30am. Essentially I had eight and a half hours of time to kill if I so chose. In that situation I often find myself making excuses to stop and check out various things, take an unnecessary nap, or take some obscure route and see what kind of sights I come across. On this particular day, however, I behaved. I stopped for fuel, but otherwise drove straight through to my stop.

The drive across Maryland and into Pennsylvania is a tedious one when you have 44,000 pounds in the wagon. It's one thing to know you will be climbing hills at 35mph. That just goes with the territory. What makes it obnoxious is the fact that cars going 55mph will pass on the way up, then cut in front of you and force you to ride the brakes on the way down, keeping you from maintaining any momentum for the next climb. The traffic volume was a little heavier than normal for a Sunday, so I actually had to pay attention to my 77,000 pound vehicle as it barreled down the highway. Bummer.

When I got to the WalMart distribution center, I dropped my loaded trailer without incident and headed back to the empty lot. Okay, we'll just take an empty and be on our way... Hmm, we'll just circle back around - must have missed an empty somewhere in there... Huh, let's take one more look... Nope, none there. Okay, maybe they put one of our empties in a different part of the lot. Let's cruise back around the rest of the lot... Nope, none there either. Okay, maybe there's one in the dock that hasn't been unloaded yet, let's check the docks... No. The only CFI trailer at the whole place was the one I just dropped.

So, I had to call and see what the dispatchers wanted to do with me. As I suspected, they just boarded me with no trailer. Now, since I'm first on the board, I'll get passed over for loads because I have nowhere for the shippers to put their freight. At some point tomorrow morning, someone will decide where they would like me to pick up an empty and we'll take it from there. It's not a huge inconvenience for me, as my 70 hours are running way low so I would most likely have been sitting until tomorrow anyway. In addition, cruising around without a trailer is a nice change of pace sometimes. I can get into most parking lots, so I can kill my time however I want to. Really though, I'll probably just hang out at this gas station until tomorrow. Man I'm getting boring!