12/22/07

Old Mother Nature was a cranky bitch today. The wind in Wyoming was the strongest I've ever seen. There was a day last winter when I saw four or five trucks blown over on their sides on my way to Denver. The winds tonight were far worse, although the only accidents appeared to involve people driving off the road. It could have been even more wicked, but fortunately I don't think the temperature ever got above freezing today. That kept the blowing snow from melting and re-freezing. There were icy patches here and there, but they were few and far between.

I don't know if there's a general rule for deciding when a trailer is heavy enough to pull through winds at a given speed. About all I could conclude was that people were passing me going up hills, so they must have been lighter than I was. If they weren't getting blown over, I might as well keep rolling. It got a little scary once or twice, but my 37,000 pound load seemed to keep me anchored to the road pretty well. By the time I finished the audiobook of Wuthering Heights, I had worked a full day. I ducked into the major cosmopolitan center known as Wamsutter, Wyoming for the night.

I'll have around four hours to drive tomorrow. I have to be there by midnight, but I'll head on in to Salt Lake City whenever I wake up. I'm not sure what to expect after this run. With Christmas falling on a Tuesday, I would speculate that several of our regular customers will be closed Monday. Maybe I'll get a long ConWay run to keep me going for a few days. Since they are expecting this load on Monday I have to guess that they're working that day. As always, time will tell soon enough.