10/8/08

Well, the day started off pretty damn smoothly. No 5am beep from the satellite with a useless message. That's a good place to begin. Then the guys at the Sears store had me unloaded in a decent amount of time. I rolled into the mountains last night with a nice light 13,000 pounds in the trailer. I rolled out of the mountains this morning with half that.

As I cruised up US-180 into Silver City I received a planned deadhead to the El Paso yard. That's about what I expected. The fine folks in New Mexico don't seem to produce a whole lot. Then, things took a turn...

I was looking for a specific address - 1310 Silver Heights Blvd. According to one mapping site, this was up on the north side of town in the business district. According to another mapping site, it was further to the southwest. Hmm. As I rolled into the business district, I found that I was on Silver Heights Blvd. I saw that the addresses seemed to coincide exactly with the first mapping site. No 1310. No Sears. Shit. So I continued on what I thought was still Silver Heights Blvd. Nope. I was on another road and headed out of town. I spotted the goat trail to the Hot Gates from the movie 300 and decided to give it a shot. It was pretty rough and pretty skinny, but I managed to circle back toward town.

I headed north on NM-90 and thought I had a pretty good idea of where I was. Might as well try the location from the other mapping site. The addresses in that part of town also fit what I was looking for. I think I got close, but had no luck on that pass. Once I got back out to the east end of town again, I pulled over and tried to call the customer. Ten minutes' worth of busy signals later, I started back into town. I didn't see what I was looking for that time either. So I made a really bright decision and followed the signs toward the main downtown area. Shit.

Faced with a dead-end and finding myself on a damn skinny road, I hung a left into a residential area. You're not really supposed to enter a road unless you know that you can get back out. I guess sometimes I don't do things the right way though. It was tight, but I managed to get back to the main drag and find my way out of there.

One more time back to the north... I turned down another street that may or may not have been legal for a truck. I didn't really know where I was headed, but I knew I wasn't going to accomplish anything by retracing the same route. Yeah, this one didn't work either. Another series of left turns through another residential neighborhood got me out of that one. Then I decided to go ahead and jeopardize my membership in the International Brotherhood of Men... I stopped and asked for directions. I know, I know.

Turns out that I was right around the corner from the place. Holy shit. The dock from the stop in Ruidoso Downs looked like an airport runway compared to this one. I had to pull into a parking lot across the street and then make a serpentine back around parked cars and angle the trailer back to my blindside. Once I got to the dock, the road was completely shut down until I left. From the dock on the west side of the street, all the way across, and within two feet of a parked car on the east side of the street, I claimed the territory as my own.

They got me empty eventually and I headed for El Paso. After dropping my trailer I was #19 on the board. Looks like I might be here a while. There are usually at least twice as many trailers here, compared to what I see right now. The deadhead and stop pay tacked on to today's loaded miles have me in pretty decent shape - 1,420 miles plus $35 in stop pay so far.

Yeah, I'll go ahead and jinx myself now. I don't give a damn. That's just how I roll... I need to get to the East Coast to watch the football game this weekend. The downside to having a 3-9 season is that you get regional coverage sometimes during the following year. Back when the Irish were good, they were televised nationally every weekend. I probably just earned myself a trip to Seattle.