7/7/08

I got back on the board this morning whenever the sun greenhousified my truck. I was #1, so that was good news. I guess it was an hour or two until I received my assignment, but I really wasn't paying attention. I had to shoot over to Plattsburgh, New York and grab a load headed to Ohio. My dispatched miles for the deadhead came in at 52. I punched the route into a couple of routing programs, and the damned ferry issue came up again. I checked the route that CTL's software gave me. Yeah, ferry. I looked online and found that the ferry in question would be $47 and also that I may or may not even be allowed on the route to the ferry location. Pain in the ass.

So I looked over my atlas. It seemed to indicate that the crossings to my immediate south and to my north were both ferry crossings. The other crossing within a reasonable distance, down by the state park in New York, is the illegal bridge that I accidentally managed to use last summer. So then, what? I could go back down to US-4, the way I entered Vermont. That would make my trip 250 miles or something like that. I sent a message asking if the $47 was okay or if they wanted to pay the longer miles.

Just then, I got a message from a lady in CTL's permit department asking me to call her and discuss my route. She noted that I couldn't go down VT-17 (to my illegal bridge) since Vermont wouldn't give us a permit to use that road. After bouncing around a few ideas, she said that I could take VT-78 across the top of the lake and that I would be fine. This didn't jive with my atlas, but it looked okay according to my newfound Vermont PDF document, so that's how I went. It was 54 miles, with no ferries and no tolls, and all was fine.

At the shipper, I was expecting a drop/hook, as my plan summary had indicated. It turned out to be a live load and I was there for quite a while before they got me rolling. I had arrived early anyway, so that's just the way it goes sometimes. Then I got to head for Ohio with a nice and easy 15,000 pound load.

Here we go again with the routing. My paid miles are 750 for the loaded run. I could go down I-87 and cut across to I-90, making the trip around 790 or so. That would likely be the quickest option. I could come out of Plattsburgh and take NY-3 across the middle of the state to I-81, then drop down to I-90. That would get me close to the 750 miles that I'm getting paid, but it looked pretty twisty on the map. I could angle north to US-11 and follow that all the way around to I-81. That looked like it would probably be quicker than NY-3 and the miles were pretty similar, so that's how I went. The load is light and I had two full days to get it there. My appointment is for 5:15pm on Wednesday. I figured I might as well try to keep the miles down and enjoy the scenery a little.

On US-11, I was rolling along and minding my business when traffic came to a dead stop. A truck had rolled over, blocking the road, and things were completely shut down. After I sat for about a half hour, the driver of a car walked up and talked to the cops. As he passed back by me, he said that it might be a couple of hours before the road was open again. If I had a 'here comes a bad decision' logo, I wouldn't insert it now...

I checked my atlas and saw that I could double back on US-11 to NY-190. Then it looked like I could take NY-190 west past all the trouble and catch back up with US-11. There was a dirt construction lot to my immediate left, so I pulled a U-turn and headed back ten or fifteen miles. NY-190 was a fine road and I was thinking that I had made a good call. Then I saw a sign saying that NY-190 ends and that the rest of what I thought was NY-190 has a 5 ton weight limit. Shit. I could go right or left, but I couldn't continue straight. To my right was US-11, meaning I would sit in the same backup that I had just left. Nah, I turned left.

The road had too many twists and turns for me to check my map as I drove and it was too skinny for me to pull over and check the map. I was officially rudderless. About all I knew was that the sun was in the southwest sky in the late afternoon. Like a good little sailor, I started following the sun. By the grace of God, I managed to snake my way through the mountains without getting into any jams, then somehow caught up with NY-3. That turned out to be a pretty sweet ride, but I had added a ton of miles to the route in the process of wandering through the Adirondacks. Oh well.

Aside from a few towns where the routing was rather bizarre, NY-3 was just a winding hilly road all the way across. For the most part, I could set the cruise and enjoy the scenery. Traffic was virtually nonexistent and my load wasn't heavy enough to cause any trouble. By the time I dropped down on I-81 to the Thruway, I was ready to eat something and call it a night. The first service plaza was full, but I found a spot at the next one. That'll do for today. I can knock out either some or all of the trip tomorrow from here. I'm delivering to a Wal-Mart DC, so I'm not getting unloaded before Wednesday evening anyway. We'll see how it goes.