1/12/09

Some people are always searching for ways to put their lives in perspective. Then you have guys like me. I'm somehow content to wander along and accept the notion that things just tend to work out okay. So, having accomplished very little of relevance in my first 32 years on this lovely planet, I didn't appreciate being hit with a major dose of perspective this morning. Head coach of the Broncos, eh? Well, he is five months older than I am. I have time to catch up.

I hadn't really resolved my scheduling plans for today when I got out of bed this morning. I could drive down early and try a couple of the local truck stops or I could wait until later and try to park at the consignee. I had an audiobook that I've been meaning to burn onto CD's, so I started that up and figured that I would head down the road once it was ready. The files were in four folders, named 'CD1,' 'CD2,' 'CD3, and 'CD4.' That should take what, a half hour or so to burn? Yeah, each folder had around 80 ten-minute files. 45 discs in all. Wowsers. Once I had started though, I was committed to getting it done. Scheduling drama solved. That took all damn day.

My drive down to Georgia was nice and easy in the late evening. Then we ran into a new set of circumstances. I'm delivering to 5165 Kennedy Road in Forest Park, Georgia (according to my dispatch). That's a nice simple address, right? My directions from my employer told me to take Exit 237 from I-75 and make a right on Kennedy. Okay, no problem there. Now let's just find 5165.

Microsoft Live Maps:

Google Earth:



Two pretty detailed photos from two different providers, showing the same warehouse. I'm parked at that warehouse right now. There is some kind of Red Cross deal at one end. The address on the windows says 200. Then there's some kind of air conditioning outfit in the middle. The address on the window says 300. I'm at the northern end, where the sign out front says, "For Lease." So I took a look at the address on my bills. I checked them when I was leaving Kansas City, to make sure that I had the right trailer, and saw that they had an address in College Park on them. This is not entirely unusual. It's a neighboring suburb and sometimes these shipments go to different warehouses. I work for a large multi-national corporation, so surely they would know where one of their own shipments was going, right? After all, this is a load being pulled by one ConWay company on behalf of another ConWay company.

I placed a call to Joplin and got some fairly reassuring news. Apparently the dispatcher who took my call received the same call from a different driver last night. She said that the driver told her that there was a 'For Lease' sign in front of the building and he needed to know where to go. Apparently he was at the right place. Either that, or she was gone when he found out that he was at the wrong place this morning. Maybe she just never heard about the conclusion. Either way, I have a place to park for the night so that's good enough. The place on the bills is a couple miles from here, back across I-75. It's right off of this same main road so I'll just camp out here until morning and then see what's what.

As I was in my marathon CD-making session this afternoon, I got beeped with a pre-plan. That's always nice... or, maybe? It says that I am to pick up a load in Atlanta tomorrow and take it to Forest Park. Eh? I don't know. There's probably (or hopefully) some kind of logic behind that one. We'll just have to wait and see how it pans out. At the very least, I'll get my $25 for the local run and take it from there.