8/31/07

Pretty decent day of work today. The drive along the US highways from Kansas into Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico is a pretty uncongested one. I made it into southern New Mexico this evening before my clock ran out, so I'll have a few hours left to run in the morning. Then I need to run down to the Petro for an oil change and, hopefully, get settled in before Our Lady's glorious defenders of truth and virtue pull one of these on the Yellow Jackets...

(Calvin who?)

I was running low on fuel, so I pulled into our fuel stop in Hooker, Oklahoma. It is a Love's but it's really more of a glorified gas station. The satellite pump wasn't working, so I could only take on about 80 gallons. That meant that I was going to have to make another fuel stop. The next one on my route was the T/A in Santa Rosa, so I pulled in and topped off the tanks. I received a message from the shop yesterday advising me that my truck was due for service, so I planned to get the work done while I was at the T/A. Of course, there was no T/A shop there so I'll have to hit the Petro in El Paso tomorrow instead.

Once I left the T/A I hopped back onto I-40 and then took the exit on the west end of Santa Rosa to pick up US-54 west outside of town. Not too long ago, I took 54 through Santa Rosa and wound up having a difference of opinion with a local constabulary. Ultimately, the arbiter of the situation was persuaded to see things my way. No harm/no foul, but I wasn't in the mood to drive through there again. On the west end of town, there were a slew of cops hanging out in the 15mph school zone, but I was going 10mph and smiling as I passed by. I don't think I saw my buddy from a couple weeks ago, but I'm sure he's out harassing someone.

There's a long stretch of construction south of Vaughn, with a posted speed limit of 45mph. In the interest of maintaining a reasonable flow of traffic, I was cruising along at 50mph. People passed me, almost once every 20 seconds, in a construction zone with a double yellow line, over and over and over. Where are the cops for these jagoffs?

I was rolling south and hoping like hell that the impending rain storm would hit me pretty good. In the warm weather, the bugs seem to get quite juicy and quite colorful. My windshield could use a blast from the heavens. No such luck. I got enough rain to make it difficult to see. So I turned on the wipers. Then the rain stopped as the highway turned south. So now the smorgasbord of bug guts is smeared all over the windshield. Always something out here.

After a nice shave of the head I think I'm ready to try for some sleep, although I'm not feeling too tired right now. I'll eventually doze off for a few hours, then wake up tired and start driving again. Gotta love those DOT guidelines.