8/30/08

After spending the morning in limbo, I finally got the clearance to take off with my trailer. I wound up in Laredo long enough to get a 34-hour restart so maybe I'll be glad for the delay by the time next weekend rolls around.

It was typical holiday weekend traffic for 99% of the 670 miles that I covered today. Anyone wanna guess which city along Satan's Driveway had traffic at a dead stop? Oh hell, you already know. I blew through San Antonio at the speed limit and things were rolling right along as I approached Austin. Traffic was light, there was no road work, and everything looked promising. Then we stopped. There was no obvious reason at first, but then I did a little detective work. Cars backed up along the exit ramps. People all over wearing ugly orange shirts. Oh hell. The Mack Brown Correctional Institute must have had a home game today. Always something in that damn town.

Otherwise everything was peachy keen. I stopped for a break and enjoyed a delicious Wendy's Spicy Chicken on the south side of Waco, but otherwise stayed on the road. I'll have to jam in another 650-700 miles tomorrow and then hit the Northeast on Monday. Holiday traffic up there... I just don't know what to expect. I had better get as many miles in as possible by tomorrow.

My week wraps up just a few cheeseburgers short of $1,500. That's welcome news, given my low expectations for next week. Monday holidays aren't generally good for business. Now, even if next week is a little shaky, I know that my bank account should be in good shape before I head down to Chicago and South Bend for a few days. Speaking of which - A couple of people backed out recently, so if anyone cares to join me for the baseball game on 9/12 in Chicago, I have two extra tickets. Just let me know. It's generally understood that you're welcome to buy me a beer, but otherwise the seats (down the left field line) are all paid for. My Tigers pretty much threw in the towel a few weeks ago, but I've never been to the new ballpark in Chicago so a buddy and I are going to check it out.

Last bit of business to address tonight - I've been rained out for the last few nights, so I skipped over that third workout and picked back up with the core stuff to get back on schedule tonight.

[Workout A]
Incline Press - Kept same weights, added two reps
French Press - Kept same weights, added two reps
Side Lateral - Kept same weights, added one rep
Seated Calf Raise - Kept same (maximum) weight, added five reps
Squat - Added ten pounds to each set, kept same reps

So that's a pretty positive workout. I did eat quite a bit more yesterday than I have been eating lately. I'm sure that the extra calories, combined with the three days away from the weights, helped me a little bit tonight.

8/29/08

I must say that I am a little surprised. Hill says she's on The One's side. Bill says he's on The One's side. And you stubborn folks are holding the current Godfather Poll steady at ten percent? Stunning.

So who says I felt like working today anyway, right? Yeah, I'm still in Laredo. I actually got assigned to a load a while ago but it has an FDA hold on it. Assuming that the feds give us the okay tomorrow morning, I'll be rolling for South Jersey. The load delivers on Tuesday morning and it's 1,958 miles, so I was hoping to head out tonight. No such luck. I will have a 3,800+ mile week plus a pretty good chunk of northeast pay though. I'll just have to put in three long days of driving to get it done. Things could be a whole lot worse. That's for sure.

8/28/08

I had a 9am (local time) delivery appointment in Houston, so I got rolling right after my ten hour break was up. I got to Houston at 8am. I got to the customer (in Houston) at 8:45am. Good times. Good times. You know, last night I heard that nobody can find a job in this country and nobody can afford gas. I guess these people didn't get the memo.

The customer was a logistics place with a long straight building and basic loading docks. No great shakes there, but the workers and customers of the place across the parking lot had their personal vehicles all over the place. Backing in proved to be quite a challenge. It took some time, but no vehicles were harmed in the making of this post.

As I sat at the dock, I received a message indicating that my next load was ready to roll. That was good news. The load was scheduled as a 10pm pickup, but the dispatcher in Laredo told me that I could most likely get it early. Turns out he was right. So once I was empty I was able to head over and make my drop/hook, then hit the road for Laredo.

When I got down here I was told that the customer was a 24/7 outfit. Good news for me. They were up on the north side of town by the truck stops, so getting a chance to drop at night was a big plus. Traffic in that area during the day is absolutely intolerable.

So I'm back at the yard and I'm #31 on the board. That's pretty good going into a Friday. My week so far is at 1,871 miles. Anything decent over the long weekend should leave me in good shape. All in all, I guess you could say that I'm content.

But it gets better... Tonight I heard that people around the world are going to love me again, I'm going to get a tax cut, I'm going to make more money, I won't need oil from the Middle East to run my car anymore, if I buy a house the price will never go down, my health insurance is going to get cheaper, if I go back to college that will be cheaper too, if I can't get out of the way of a hurricane the President will come and save me, maniacal dictators won't want to harm their neighbors anymore, we'll move past the sins of my ancestors (Irish immigrants who didn't own slaves BTW), Social Security isn't really going bankrupt so I don't need to worry about retirement, and... best of all... those evil rich dudes will pay for it all. I'm pumped!

8/27/08

So my little split break experiment was perfectly timed... for overnight road work on the north side of Austin. Freaking I-35. After finishing up the other end of the break, the trip into Laredo was nice and easy.

I had a couple of choices coming out of Laredo. I could take a load back up I-35 to the Dallas suburbs for tomorrow morning. That one sounds bad by default, for obvious reasons. Or I could take one to Houston for tomorrow morning. The miles were shorter on the Houston run, but it came with a pre-planned load heading back to Laredo. The dispatcher seemed to think that there should be plenty of freight for the weekend down there. So I'm headed to Houston. Hopefully I can get some decent miles over the long weekend once I get back to Laredo.

I was in Laredo for an eight hour stretch to get me another leg of driving and use up the rest of my hours under the 70 hour rule. I got to Beeville tonight, where I can take ten hours and get out of the split by tomorrow. I'll have an early morning of driving in order to get to Houston, so I guess it's bedtime.

8/26/08

Zero kidney pain today, so anything else that happened was going to be cool with me. I wasn't willing to wander into Austin this evening, so I've stopped at a rest area outside Salado for a while.

Now we play a little game called FMCSA Calculus... I had ten hours available today under the 70 hour rule. I stopped for fuel, drove 8.25 hours, and did a post-trip inspection. So I now have 1.25 hours under the 70 hour rule, right? Okay, let's continue...

At midnight, I pick up 6.5 hours from eight days ago. That will get me to 7.75 hours under the 70 hour rule. Still with me? Good...

Unlike many of my colleagues, I am a fan of using the split-sleeper provision when it helps my cause. Let's see what it can do for me now. I can spend 8 hours at this rest area instead of 10, allowing me to get through Austin at 3am instead of 5am. Then I should hit San Antonio at 4:30am instead of 6:30am. Sounds good to me so far. If I can't clear those two cities at those hours, I can never clear those two cities at any hour. Now let's see how the 11,70, and 14 hour clocks play out...

Today alone, the 11 hour rule was irrelevant since I only had 10 total hours available under the 70 hour rule. My 14 hour clock would have expired tonight at midnight. The 8 hour break takes me past midnight (getting me those other 6.5 hours under the 70), extends my 14 hour clock to 8am, and allows me to use the other 2.75 hours (out of 11) that would have been allowed in a normal driving shift if not hampered by the 70 hour rule. So I can drive my 2.75 hours to get past Austin and San Antonio, then take a 2 hour break to complete my split. At that point, I get back the chunks of my 11 and 14 that I used before the 8 hour break, allowing me to continue on to Laredo. So, at least to me, the split seems like a much better option than the standard 10 hour break. Are we clear?

[Workout B]
One-arm Row - Added ten pounds to each set, maintained reps
Curl - Kept same weights, lost one rep
Front Lateral - Added 2.5 pounds to third set, maintained reps
Stiff-Legged Deadlift - Added ten pounds to each set, maintained reps
Hammer Curl - Kept same weights, added one rep

So that's that I guess. I have to keep adding weight until those big muscles get to the breaking point, so the strain on my arms cuts into the smaller muscle movements a little bit. (Ladies, are you paying attention? Ole Joey has a really strong back...) So yeah, it's tempting to cut down on that and try to curl more but this isn't my first rodeo. I used to be a bit of a weightlifting aficionado. One of the first lessons that the 'roid freaks at the gym taught me was, "If you want bigger biceps, keep doing your squats." You have to get that core built up nice and strong and then the 'beach muscles' come along for the ride. It's gonna be a long autumn...

8/25/08

Up with the (lack of) sun, I headed down the street a few miles to my consignee. They had to call an impromptu rent-a-cop conference to discuss the seal on my trailer. It had been inspected by the Border Patrol, so the new seal didn't match the pre-printed number on the paperwork. I had noted this on the bills, but they didn't seem too satisfied. Long story short... twenty minutes later they noted the same thing on the bills and sent me to a door.

I took the load to Tennessee in hopes that there would be freight available in short order. The load that I could have taken to Missouri had a few more miles, but we tend to have an abundance of drivers in Missouri. Tennessee seemed like the best bet. See here, I'm not always a dummy. I was assigned to my next load before I left my consignee this morning. It was a quick lengthy 65 mile drive over to Clarksville (through Nashville in the morning), picking up a load headed back to Laredo. NAFTA seems to play a pretty big role in keeping my bills paid. I can tell you that much.

I was at the shipper for quite a while, as the order that I was picking up appears to have fallen through the cracks. Most loads were already pulled and staged. Mine was not. Once they found the information, the forklift guys had to work on filling the order and load my trailer as they went along. No biggie. After a few hours I was on my way.

The day was looking up as I started to head westward. I drove out of the rain at some point and the traffic was moving freely. Alas, all good things must come to an end. Another monsoon brought a pretty slow trip through Memphis. I made it around a hundred miles into Arkansas and then pulled over to call it a night.

On some instances people are asked to name something that they fear. I have always maintained that I don't fear anything. I have nothing to lose so why would I have anything to fear, right? Tonight I was reminded that this is not entirely true. I fear kidney stones. Roughly eight years ago, I had a couple of run-ins with the damn things. I can honestly say that the pain caused by the back pressure on my kidney was worse than anything else I've ever experienced. From that point forward, I've been a water drinking fool. The doctors at the time said that I would likely face recurrences throughout my life and I am 100% committed to proving them wrong. I guess I won't know for sure until morning, but I sincerely hope that the pain in my side right now isn't the beginning of another one. It's not too bad at this point but it's hard to say. Hopefully I just have an irritated bladder or something. I am quite afraid of kidney stones.

Anyhow, the FMCSA says that I can kick out nine hours of driving tomorrow so I guess that's what I'll do. I'm going to try and find a way to get through the last few hundred miles of Satan's Driveway late at night. I think that my dispatch should allow me to do so.

8/24/08

I guess that any day that allows me to get through Memphis and Nashville at the speed limit is probably a good day. Decent weather, no delays, all was right with the world.

Now I'm sitting at a little parking area along the highway and trying to figure out if my cell phone is totally screwed or not. I received a call earlier and it had an obnoxious buzzing sound, audible both to myself and to the other person. So I shut the phone off, turned it back on, and tried calling back. Same buzzing sound. After a pretty thorough search of the world wide interweb, it seems that most people experiencing the same problem can point to one common factor - water. Yep, my phone was in my pocket when I got what amounted to a fully-clothed shower in Laredo the other day.

So all of the conventional wisdom is fairly useless to me at this point. They say to shut it off immediately and avoid electrical damage. Yeah, I didn't realize that there was an issue until today and it has been turned on the whole time. They say to soak everything in alcohol or to dry the components in a desiccant like rice or silica before powering on the phone. Well, like I said, it has already been on for two days and I don't have those substances handy. So for now it's disassembled, wrapped in paper towels (best I could do), and sitting in front of an A/C vent. So far I haven't come across anything to cure the buzzing sound. I imagine that the damage has probably been done. Oh well, it's always something.