4/4/08

I went to bed last night, fully expecting today to be a less than pleasant one. When I woke up this morning... well, let's talk about when I woke up this morning. I had to get up, kick the tires, and drive seventeen miles before 9am (my time). So I set my alarm for 8:20am. A half hour before I would have awakened, I got a damn beep from the satellite unit. It was a dumbass message reminding me to send in my arrival call at the shipper. So, what is it? Am I to understand that today, after two years of sending arrival calls at every shipper, I was going to forget without a reminder? I doubt it. I'm guessing that they saw that my truck hadn't moved, so they assumed I needed a wake-up call but didn't want to say as much. Whatever dude. Shitty start to a shitty day.

Things actually went quite smoothly at the brewery. There wasn't the usual logjam of trucks at the gate. This was my first trip to the Fort Collins location with this truck though. That meant that I had to drop my empty and then circle back around so they could weigh my bobtail. Again though, no traffic at the scales so it was okay. I hooked to my new trailer, strapped in the load, slid my tandems, and checked out. At that point I had some optimism that maybe today wouldn't be so bad.

Then I got on I-25. There's a certain something about being on a road where you have to downshift up a hill every two minutes for a whole freaking day. Another little feature of this particular route - You can manage to hit the morning rush into Denver and the afternoon rush out of Albuquerque in the same trip. Good times... good times. At least I got bypass signals at all the scales.

I'll have a few hours to go in the morning from here in Lemitar, where I've set up for the night. I think I'm going to grab one more load before I request my home time, despite my suspicion that I'll get sent back up I-25. I got caught in a rut last year where I kept going from El Paso to Colorado and back. In this case though, I would be directed toward home once I got back up there anyway. I'm a big boy. I can handle one more trip to wherever I'm needed, then head toward the home of the winless Detroit Tigers.

Today was payday, which is always nice. I got $24 in detention pay for a load that I pulled from Massachusetts not too long ago. That's a marked improvement in quickness for this company, in terms of paying detention. I did not, however, get my $17.50. So...

WHERE IN THE WORLD IS THE GODFATHER'S UPS PAY?
EPISODE 2

Okay gumshoes, last week we found the elusive money hiding out in the country of Sri Lanka. Just before our operatives swooped in though, my money escaped on a river barge and disappeared without a trace. We have received a few clues as to its present whereabouts:

1) Another former part of the British Empire
2) Never reached a consensus on its official name
3) Home to three mountain chains and three river systems