12/4/07

You know, I started this blog a while back in order to give the best and most real answer I could to the ever-present question - "What's it really like out there?" You can't really answer in a sentence or two, so I started typing each day, day after day, week after week - this is what today was like out here. I get feedback from quite a few people, either through the feedback form or the comment function. I enjoy the conversation and support from everyone, but I honestly could use a day where I have nothing to say to you guys. Something along the lines of "I went from there to here, logged a few hundred miles, that's all" would do me some good right now. I don't mind the typing, and I always have plenty of spare time, but I just need a day where nothing actually happens... I guess there's always tomorrow.

My customer this morning was about a mile from where I slept at the Flying J. I took my ten hour break there, got my act together, and headed over. The directions were nice and simple - take a left on Enterprise and a right on Purity Drive. 6am appointment, it's 5:30am, we're good to go.

The left on Enterprise was clearly marked, which is always nice before the sun comes up. No worries there. Then rolling along slowly, holding up traffic (as if I give a shit), I started looking for Purity Drive. All the way through the industrial park and back down by the Flying J - no Purity Drive. So I doubled back. It was dark, so maybe I missed it. Back through again. Nope, no Purity drive. By this time it was 5:50am, so I had ten minutes. No big deal, I'll call the customer and see what they have to say. I got some canned message saying to e-mail for assistance. Okay, I guess I'll call CFI and get another number. They gave me the same number I had already called. Honestly, why would I expect anything different? So I headed back through again. There was a street going west, roughly where I would expect to find Purity Drive. It was called Mt. Zion, but maybe they just changed the name or something. It had a couple of businesses with loading docks so I gave it a shot. Neither business was my customer and both had closed gates, so I needed to find a place to turn around. 90 degree turn, and another, then an 's' curve, then another 90. This ain't good. Hopefully I can at least catch a connecting street and get back out to the main drag. Nope. The street wound around for a half mile, then turned into a one lane dirt road with a 4 ton weight limit. Nice.

So as I sat there, preparing to back out of the jam I was in, the clock struck 6am. The scenarios started going through my head - I'm going to clip a mirror on a pole coming around one of these blindside corners and get a preventable accident. Or maybe my fleet manager is going to give me shit about being late and I'll threaten to kick his ass. Then I'll lose my job. Or maybe the customer will kick me to the back of the line for missing my appointment. Then I'll have to sit all morning and wait to get loaded. Lots of scenarios, none of them good.

On a positive note, whatever backing issues I had yesterday seem to have worked themselves out. Blindside, sightside, 90 degrees, 45 degrees, 'S' curves, I did a pretty nice job backing out of there this morning. It only took about ten minutes to get out. That seems pretty solid to me, considering it was a half mile around five or six turns.

At that point, my only choice was to start going building to building. Something had to give sooner or later. First driveway - nope. Second - nope. Third, fourth, fifth - nope, nope, nope. At some point I found a driveway that went around the side of a building and further back. Purity Drive. It didn't have a sign, but the building at the end had an address on it. So, twenty minutes late, I checked in. I wasn't being loaded. I wasn't late. I didn't have a 6am appointment. It was a drop/hook to be made any time between 6am and 3pm. The stress, anxiety, and uncertainty of the morning were caused by my company's policy that drivers can't be trusted with complete information since a few of them might not use their time wisely. In light of a recent message board conversation, this is either completely hilarious or utterly disgusting. I haven't decided yet.

If I knew it was a 6am-3pm drop/hook, I would have rolled out of bed around 8am instead of hearing the alarm at 5:15am. I would have been more rested than I was. The sun would have been up. Perhaps, as I drove past Purity Drive the first time, I may have seen the sign for my customer about a hundred yards down. Perhaps I wouldn't have. Either way, I wouldn't have felt rushed for time and grasped for straws. I most likely wouldn't have ended up at the end of a road from which, quite frankly, half of our drivers probably couldn't have backed out. Instead, I got what I got. And that's just the way it is.

Things did get better from there. The load is 20,000 pounds. It's light enough not to drag me too bad on the hills but heavy enough to make for a smooth ride. The traffic around Indianapolis was light and quick. I caught a nice nap just outside Kentucky. The traffic through Louisville was light and quick. The weather was clear and dry, getting progressively warmer as I got further south. The traffic through Nashville was light and quick. I actually saw a big truck that had rear-ended someone and it didn't burn to the ground. That eased my mind a little bit, in light of the last few that I've seen.

Just past the scales on the way to Chattanooga, I ducked into the parking area and called it a day. I'm not all that tired, but sometimes I need to learn when to say when. (A friend of mine is a shrink and that's what she says. She claims that it's an Irish thing. I don't know. But anyhow...) I'll have about nine hours of driving tomorrow, then a Thursday morning drop. The customer is a store, so I'm parking in their lot whether they like it or not. That means I don't have to worry about setting an alarm. I'll just get there when I get there. I need to get a marker light on my truck replaced along the way, but that shouldn't take too long.

For the second day in a row, the only radio station that would come in for more than ten minutes was NPR. I got the extreme pleasure of listening to their assessment of the worldwide terrorism threat (or lack thereof) and what they think should be going on in America. You know how some people think in movie quotes? I'm one of those people.