10/20/08

So I was lying there in Hagerstown last night when I wound up on the phone with some chick from back home. I had never talked to her on the phone before, but it was a pretty entertaining conversation. Seeing as I was on the phone and not sleeping, I decided just to finish the trip up to Carlisle.

Pretty standard operation there. Check in, slide tandems, drop trailer. I cruised through the yard looking for an empty and didn't find one. When the yard dog came by, I flagged him down and asked if he knew where I could find an empty. Now, to some people this request may have sounded like an invitation to share one's life story as I stood freezing my nuts off in the 32 degree air at 2am. I can assure you however that I really just wanted an empty. After the guy finished his soliloquy he said, "I know I saw one of yunz's trailers around the back of the building." When I drove around the building, none of our trailers were anywhere to be found. As some of you know, I have a bit of history with the state of Pennsylvania. My long held understanding has been that 'yunz' is a form of 'you ones,' which is an unnecessary extrapolation of the perfectly acceptable plural pronoun 'you.' It now seems that I need to revisit my knowledge of the Pennsylvania vernacular as, in this case, 'yunz' meant 'somebody else.'

Anyway, what was I saying? Yeah, no empty trailers. I checked in with the receiving office and they sent me to some neighboring industrial park to check on another lot. I don't know what in the hell that was all about. The industrial park just had two vacant warehouses and no trailers of any stripe. So I called in and the fine folks in Joplin put me on the board without a trailer. The morning shift would have to sort it out from there. Good enough. Time for bed.

Guess who was awakened by a beep from his Qualcomm this morning at 6am, asking him not to use the phones unless necessary today. On second thought, don't guess. You already know the answer. As if it wasn't bad enough that I couldn't fall asleep until well after 4am.

Around the time I managed to doze off again, I received the information for my next assignment. It was set to pick up at 2pm, so I responded and hopped back in bed. Then the sequence of events that I guess I knew was coming... came. I got a message asking if I had an empty. No. I got a message asking me to remind them to check with the CSR, who wouldn't arrive until 7am Central. Fine. I sent the reminder as requested, and the fun continued.

They told me to go to the Michael's in Carlisle to retrieve an empty. A Michael's distribution center in Carlisle? That doesn't make sense. Hazleton is only 100 miles away from Carlisle. Why would they have two DC's so close together? Some people are paid to think. I, much to my liking, am not paid to think. I am paid to drive. So I followed the directions to the Michael's in Carlisle. Yep. Retail store. No empty there, obviously.

Another exchange of messages had me on my way to Hazleton. Of course that place hasn't exactly been a reliable source of empties in the past. Today though, they had plenty. I grabbed the first one I saw and bounced back south to York for my pickup. The people there were friendly and efficient, then I was rolling westward.

I made a call to part of that aforementioned history with the state of Pennsylvania. Apparently she's no longer married, so I thought she might want to meet me along I-70 for some dinner. She was busy tonight though, so I stopped and took a nap instead. Then I had a pretty easy drive into Ohio, where I've stopped just east of Columbus for the night. I have a 5am Wednesday appointment in Gas City, Indiana so tomorrow will be a nice easy day for me.

All told, I managed to put 575 miles on the odometer today. That ain't so bad. Disregarding all of the extracurricular nonsense, the driving part went pretty smoothly. Maybe tomorrow will bring more of the same.