7/29/08

That went a lot better than expected. I knocked out a full eleven hours through the night and into this morning, getting me all the way to Henderson, North Carolina. I hadn't really checked my map all that closely, but I didn't realize that I would be able to make it that far. The overnight traffic was obviously light, with the exception of construction zones sporadically placed along the entire route.

If you'll indulge me a quick detour... I hear from various folks, including our next President, that we don't need to increase our oil supply because the answer is "alternatives." So we take it up the ass on gas prices while they spend hundreds of billions of tax dollars trying to find a way to use bunny fur and warm hugs to power our vehicles. Why then can't we spend a few hundred billion dollars trying to find the replacement for asphalt and concrete? From coast to coast and border to border, our roads are all messed up. Every summer since we have had roads in this country, the roads have been getting repaired and replaced. Clearly we can't pave our way out of the problem. We need a new type of road surface. Just a thought.

Anyhow, the timing of this run was about as perfect as I could hope for it to be. Traffic was starting to kick up a little by the time I went through Richmond, but otherwise everything was groovy. When I woke up this afternoon, I took a look at the directions to my consignee. They said that overnight parking was available, so I went ahead and drove down to Salisbury once my ten hour break was complete. It was late enough that the usual meat grinder from Durham to Greensboro wasn't too crowded, but early enough to let me get another break in before tomorrow morning. By the time I'm empty in the morning, I will have been here for more than ten hours so I'll have a fresh clock. And that, my friends, is how you drive 800 miles down the east coast in less than 24 hours.

I sent in my request for home time when I got here. Hopefully the planner dudes will come up with something cool whenever they start work in the morning.