1/15/09

I forgot to shut off my phone when I went to bed last night. A friend of mine decided to send me a text message on her way to work this morning. The text said, "Ready to come home yet?" The image...

That took some of the sting away from being awakened at 5am again. The temperature only got down into the high 40's in Orlando last night. 60's today. I was able to sleep peacefully through the night with my engine turned off.

Since I was awake after receiving the text message, I called the 800 line to check on my board status. I was up to #2 at the time. Then I went back to bed. The next time I woke was around 8:30am. I called again. I had a message pending and was assigned to a load. That power saving mode on the Qualcomm is a definite liability then. What if I had needed to be somewhere before 8:30am and I had remembered to shut off my phone last night? The satellite messages never came through and nobody could have reached me by phone. Yeah, major design flaw in my book.
I turned on the truck and waited for the messages to come through. I was assigned to make a drop/hook in Lakeland and haul the load to Daytona Beach. Eh? A 55 mile deadhead and a 109 mile run? Oy. A couple of seconds later I got another plan summary. This one had the same Lakeland-to-Daytona run with another one stacked behind it. Okay then. That's better.

My dispatch said that I had to arrive at the shipper by 10:30am. I was to deliver at 10pm. I was to pick up the next load by midnight. Bounce those times around in your head for a minute. Yeah, exactly. I could have called to see if I could make the pickup later, since it was a pre-loaded trailer. This would have pushed today's 14-hour clock well past midnight and probably made everything work out fine. This also would have sucked ass, since I slept well last night. I had no desire to sit around all day and then end up with an overnighter out of Florida. I headed down and made the drop/hook as scheduled, thinking that I would just go to the consignee and see what happened.

Once I had my loaded trailer, I got my dispatch to Daytona Beach. The dispatch included the number of an empty trailer that I was to retrieve, meaning that the delivery was also a drop/hook. Beauty. Since the consignee was a retail store, I had assumed that it would be a live unload. With a drop/hook I might have a better shot at getting rid of it early. I pulled into the lot and saw the empty that I was told to take. That was a good sign. Upon checking in with a guy in the receiving area, I was told that they presently didn't have an open dock for me to make my drop. The trailers at the docks were all full. I would have to check back tonight. Damn. Might end up with that 'suck ass' schedule after all.

The guy was very friendly and told me that it would be no problem to stay parked behind the store until tonight. He pointed out a couple of local restaurants within walking distance. There was also a WalMart next door, so I was able to grab a few supplies and make my break enjoyable enough.

As I walked around though, something stood out to me. People don't make eye contact anymore. I don't mean the usual level of social indifference. That doesn't seem odd to me in the least. I'm perfectly content to be left alone and I don't really concern myself with what other people are doing. What stood out to me is that people seem to make a conscious effort to avoid looking another person in the eye and saying, "Hello." It's not that they don't notice you. It's that they do notice you and seem to wish that they hadn't. It's like somehow everyone has been defeated at some unknown game. The clerks at the store, the passersby on the sidewalk, the vendors pulling into the parking lot. Virtually every person that I passed today made a real effort not to acknowledge the proximity of another human. It struck me that we, as a society, have been gradually conditioned to be cowards, afraid of even a customary greeting or a polite nod. 'Pathetic' was the word that came to mind at the time. Then I started to drift into my own silent lamentations about the 'how' and 'why' of the things that are going on in the country these days. A bunch of people who are afraid to look each other in the eye seemed quite fitting to me.

Then again, an old employee of mine once told me that I looked mean (as I was counseling her to do her freaking job). There was a girl living with me at the time, so I went home and asked her about it. "Oh, hell yeah you do!... oh... I mean... you can be very intimidating... until someone gets to know you." I appreciated her honesty, but I could have done without the enthusiasm. Maybe she was right though. Maybe I'm just the problem and people are all happy to acknowledge one another when I'm not around. I don't know. Whatever. I still say it's pathetic.

I picked up some blank DVD's while I was at WalMart. This gave me a chance to get some movies onto discs and clean up my hard drive a little. It also killed some time for me. Finding ways to kill the down time seems to be my biggest challenge on the road. After wasting a few more hours, I checked back in and made my drop/hook.

I was out of Daytona Beach early enough to get up to the paper plant in Palatka and make another drop/hook, then move up the road a little ways before shutting down for the night. Four trailers in one day. Hmm, that's something. This load will take me to Laredo, well below the wicked cold weather. Beauty. My dispatch says that I'm due by Sunday morning, but I'm going to try and knock it out in two shots and get there Saturday night. I need to get home by next weekend. I would prefer to get my request placed as soon as possible. I usually tend to get home swiftly from Laredo but these days it's best to leave some margin for error.