7/18/08

I'll probably get off this old man schedule for the next couple of days. That will be nice. I had the alarm on my cell phone set for 5:30am when I went to bed last night. At midnight, the phone rang (since some nameless jackass forgot to shut it off). I smacked the phone, thinking that it was my alarm, and started getting dressed. Then the little voicemail notification thing chimed. In a bit of a daze, I managed to figure out that it had been a phone call and not the alarm. But who in the hell would be calling at 5:30am? Then, in a little bit less of a daze, I figured out that it wasn't 5:30am. Not time to get up yet. Then I spent five hours trying to get back to sleep. Bastards.

The drive down to Jacksonville was a little slow and rainy. You get the occasional psychological study out here. Try this one on for size. There is a fairly long stretch of I-95 in Georgia that is under construction. There are two full-sized lanes, but a concrete wall runs close to the white line on the right. I wound up getting passed by a guy hauling a gigantic boat just before we got to the construction zone. His load took up both lanes and often came close to the walls or barrels along the sides, so he started going quite slowly. As time progressed, both lanes filled in solidly behind the boat and we all plodded along. For a good twenty minutes, I sat and watched cars jockey to cut each other off, going from the right lane to the left and from left to right. A given car might have made ten lane changes through that stretch without moving any further foward, on account of the monstrous rolling roadblock that was (shockingly) going at the same speed in both lanes. This is definitely more of an observation than a critique, since I probably would have been doing the same thing if I weren't sitting up high enough to see the boat ahead. I'm not sure what conclusion to draw. It was just pretty amusing to be able to watch from my vantage point.

Anyhow, moving along... I received a pre-plan shortly after I got rolling this morning, meaning that I wouldn't have to repeat the Jacksonville parking search from a couple days ago. That's always nice. I rolled into Jacksonville this afternoon for what should have been a quick and easy drop/hook. First, I realized that my ability to back my truck effectively this week was a short-lived phenomenon. I couldn't get it done worth a shit today. Oh well, it got in there eventually. Then I rolled to the back and grabbed an empty. A coworker of mine stopped next to me and said that he had just dropped that empty. He was planning to circle around and then sweep it out, but I snagged it before he was done inspecting his new loaded trailer. I peeked inside and it looked pretty clean to me, so I told him not to worry about it. Not many of our shippers would have a problem with the little bit of dirt on the floor. Then I sent in my forms to get my next assignment.

On the way out of the yard, not having received my assignment yet, I wondered what was going on. The other CTL fella stopped in front of me and then came running back to tell me not to send in my 'dropped trailer' form yet, since he hadn't sent in his 'dropped trailer' form. This meant, to those of you unfamiliar with our protocols, that I had picked up a trailer that wasn't yet technically available to me. We were both heading through the security check at that point, so he sent his forms after he got checked out. Then I got my assignment and confirmed my next load, allowing me to see the directions to my first stop...

"The block was dead Yo, so I continued to, A1A, BEACHFRONT AVENUE!..." What, you mean I'm the only one who still owns a Vanilla Ice cassette? Whatever man. My pick up was at a paper mill in Fernandina Beach. The directions were pretty amusing - Take Highway A1A east and don't turn until you get to the ocean. Road dead-ends into customer. Yep, I can handle those kind of directions.

The yard dog had to inspect my empty trailer before I could drop it. Guess who was told that he had to sweep out the little bit of dirt in his trailer. Oh well, you win some and you lose some. I picked up a nice heavy load of paper and hopped back on the road. It's 41,000 pounds, compared to the ~45,000 that we get with a beer load, so I wasn't too worried about the weight. I put the axles where I thought they would be okay and then didn't think much of it. I guess it would have been smart to stop at a scale, but I was getting tired and didn't feel like it. Guess who got a red light on his Prepass at the scale on I-10. Oh well, you win some and you lose some. I pulled in and went over the weigh-in-motion scales, then got directed to stop on the real scales. I didn't think I should have any weight issues, but I couldn't say for sure since I never weighed my axles. They left me twisting in the wind for about forty seconds, then I got the green light signaling that all was fine and I could get back on the road.

Not much further to the west, I ducked into a truck stop and called it a day. I was damn exhausted and starting to get a headache. That waking up early shit is for the birds. I have to be in Laredo on Monday afternoon, so I'll have a pretty easy 'no alarm clock' kind of weekend. These last few days of running hard have left my 70 hours in short supply, so I can only drive about fifteen hours over the next two days. That's fine with me, as you could probably guess. I'll wrap up the pay period with a healthy 3,915 miles.

Sprint apparently has a new policy limiting monthly downloads on its wireless plan to 5GB. I tend to use quite a bit of bandwidth, so this was unwelcome news to me. Tonight though, I'm parked next to a hotel with a wi-fi server. I guess I'll start up my torrent program and try to grab some entertainment while I sleep. Free bandwidth is free bandwidth, after all.