10/16/07

So... that dock this morning turned out to be no trouble at all. By the time they were ready for me, the bedbuggers had all moved on out and I had plenty of room to work. I did have to pull into the lot across the street, but I didn't encounter any traffic.

That was the part that I thought would be difficult, and it turned out to be easy. Driving into the terminal was the part that I thought would be easy. Think again.

Eureka Road has been under construction, of and on, for what seems like several years now. For a while, we couldn't make the left from the I-75 ramp and head toward our terminal. My last few times home, the left has been okay and I've had no issues. Today it was closed. No problem.

Since Racho Road (on which the terminal sits) is restricted to trucks, the only legal approach is from the north. I.e. from Eureka. So, the best thing would be to use the U-turn lane and come back up Eureka to Racho. Well, there were orange barrels taking away one of the lanes on Eureka and the day cab guy that I saw ahead of me... hit one of the barrels. That was enough to convince me that the U-turn didn't look like a good option. No problem.

I could make a left on Allen, then a left on Northline, then a left on Racho and run straight across Eureka and into the terminal from the north. No tight turns, no restricted routes, no bridges, all good. Yeah, no. I got onto Racho and saw that the left lane was closed. The right lane was a little tight, but no tighter than any urban construction zone on the freeway. Halfway down, there was a sign saying that Racho was closed at Eureka. Well shit, that didn't sound too cool. There was nowhere for me to turn around, so all I could do was drive along and hope they left me an out. They were routing the traffic onto the access road behind the mall. No problem.

Houston, we have a problem. The turn was crazy tight. I could make it with my truck but the trailer was another story altogether. I moved the barrels that were closest to the turn and got as far along as I could, then got out to take another look. Oh boy, this was a doozy. There was already a line of cars down Racho behind me and another lining the access road in front of me. Fuck 'em. They weren't going anywhere until I figured my way out of that mess. The only trouble was that the track my trailer tires would have to follow... wasn't there.

The road had been cut and the right trailer tires would have to go into a trough that was pretty damn deep. I concluded that this would be my best bet. It wasn't deep enough to drop the axle below the edge, and I had no weight at all in the rear of the trailer, so I hoped to be able to drag it up and over once it went into the cut out. The left tandems hadroom to stay on the road, so I felt pretty good about my prospects. And down they go... slowly... slowly. And now up the other side... I said up the other side... Come on now, up the other side... The trailer being cocked to the right was taking the pressure off of my left side drive tires, so I tried locking in the differential and gave it another tug. And away we go! Beauty. I don't mind telling you - that was some stressful shit right there. No harm, no foul though. No damage, a few people inconvenienced, but not too terribly, and I got back to the yard.

I guess sometimes it can be harmful to have knowledge of the local routes. If I weren't from around here, I would have probably driven all the way down to Southgate before I saw a big parking lot, and then turned around to head back up Eureka to Taylor. Such is life.

Laundry is done, so now it's a question of how to spend the next few hours. I am struggling with that decision, but I'm down to three choices:

1) Volunteer at a homeless shelter.
2) Write a thesis regarding the world's shifting demographics and the impact they will have on the long-established macroeconomic paradigms upon which modern governments are based.
3) Go to the Wheat & Rye with some friends for beer and baseball.

I'll wrestle with this decision for a while, I'm sure. Tune in tomorrow to see how it all ends!