12/20/07

Here's some shocking news: I didn't sleep worth a shit last night. Thus, I was a little tired along the drive to Illinois. I left early enough that I had time for a nap along the way, so that worked out okay for me.

I arrived at the customer and was delighted to see a wicked tight dock, on my right, facing a street. Beauty. I had no desire to tackle that thing from the blind side, so I cruised through a residential neighborhood and went around a couple of blocks to get set up facing the other direction. I don't imagine that this was completely legal, but it ain't a crime if you don't get caught. Even from the left, it took me a while to get settled in without hitting the truck next to me. He had arrived the night before and gone to sleep, so he got the easier of the two open docks. Of course, the largely deserted road turned into Fifth Avenue at rush hour as soon as I blocked it with my trailer. Story of life out here.

When the customer opened for business, I was unloaded quickly. I had noticed a few trucks parked at the local WalMart on my way into town, so I headed over there and hopped in bed for a spell. After a few hours of sleep I got my beep. I honestly didn't know what planet I was on when the thing went off. I was looking around, wondering if I had missed an appointment. The sense of relief when I realized that I was already empty and just waiting for work was quite immense.

My next run is a ConWay load, leaving Gary, Indiana tomorrow morning and heading for Salt Lake City. The directions say that SLC is a 24/7 drop/hook location, so I'll have some flexibility to get there whenever I want to this weekend. Now it's just a matter of killing time until morning. The deadhead over here was only 60 miles, so again my pay period is off to a slow start. I started on home time, then spent a day on the board, then got a couple of fairly short runs, then this short deadhead. The run to SLC is over 1,400 miles so that will hopefully get me kick-started. Last year I was on the road through Christmas and New Year. I got pretty huge miles during that time. Since I just got a restart at home a couple of days ago, I'll be poised to run a lot of miles over the next several days. We'll see how it goes.