12/22/08

You know what really rocks about making a 6am delivery out in the sticks on a Monday morning? Unplowed streets and parking lots from the weekend. Just for shits and giggles, this route included a neat little double hairpin thing along the way. I had to make a really hard left from M-60 eastbound onto Business 60 westbound. Then, before that turn was even complete, I had to make an insane right almost u-turn onto some side street. Good times. Good times.

There was a truck at the consignee's dock when I arrived so I assumed that I was in for a long morning. Yes sir. The freight consisted of racks of glass, carefully nailed and placed along the floor of the trailer. As would be expected, it took a long time to get them unloaded. Long story short - arrived before 6am, left at 11:45am.

I did get my paid deadhead to Taylor immediately once I was empty. I guess there's really no reason that I should have expected otherwise. It has been right around two years since I went past the five days though, so I wasn't sure if anything had changed after the ConWay buyout. I guess not.

Going into the consignee this morning, I was around 77,000 pounds and there was a foot of snow on the ground. This made cornering a little tricky, mainly because I didn't really know where the roads ended and the ditches began, but the traction was pretty good. Leaving the consignee, I was around 33,000 pounds and the roads had been plowed down to a nicely packed layer of frozen snow. This made for a slipping and sliding pain in the ass. I only got stuck once though. Not so bad I guess. The state highway out of Niles was in decent shape, all things considered, but traffic was moving quite slowly. I was hoping for better once I reached I-94. No, it wasn't better. Worse maybe. The conventional wisdom holds that salt is ineffective when the temperature is incredibly low, so they just plow the snow off and leave a nice slick coating on the road surface. I think that the sunlight and the traffic would have generated plenty of heat to make the salt work today, but that's not my call. What can you do? Just drive along and deal with it.

After resisting my urge to wreak havoc on slow people in the left lane for a while, I ducked off for a lunch break outside Battle Creek. Then I got back on the road and found clean dry pavement all the way to Taylor. I'll be damned. Maybe the counties in the western part of the state were just saving their salt for a rainy day or something.

Back at the yard I had to clean out my trailer. There were still some boards nailed to the floor and it was generally pretty dirty and dusty. Funny little thing - when it's fifteen degrees outside, the inside of the trailer... is fifteen degrees. I can't say that I enjoyed that too much. Glamorous life of a truck driver and so forth.

I had time to grab some dinner with Mom, Dad, and the rev tonight. My mother had her knee scoped last week. Between her with her knee and me with my bashed up kneecap and squirrely ankle, we must have looked pretty funny walking through the icy parking lot. Then back home to read the mail and catch up some laundry. I told the dispatcher that I would be on the board tomorrow morning so I suppose I'll try to get some sleep. There's kinda sorta someone that I should meet for a few drinks tonight, but this was just a damn long day. I think I would rather go to bed. How pathetic is that? I think I'm getting old.

One last bit of whining from me tonight. Al Gore is lucky that he hasn't crossed my path lately. I will seriously kick that guy in the jimmy if I ever see him. I don't even care if he's in tight with The One. They can throw me in the gulag if they have to. I'll hurt him. Michigan should be warm and dry in the winter by now, damnit. SUV's as far as the eye can see and single digit overnight temps. That's horseshit. If they want more tax money and higher energy prices, I want some damn global warming.

I won't leave you on such a sour note though. Oh no, not tonight. Tonight I have news that fills my heart with joy. I happen to know a thing or two about the good old beer goggles. It's pretty hard not to notice the effect if you drink enough. You could safely say that I have drunk enough. There's new research though. Oh yes, there's new research. Beer goggles last longer for women. Money quote - "Researchers found that women who drink even moderately develop a reduced ability to rate attractiveness in male faces, even when they are sober." Hallelujah! There's hope for me yet.