1/7/09

I used to have a cooler in my truck. I would stop and grab some cold cuts and iced tea and stuff like that whenever I had a chance, trying to spend wisely on food and such. People had told me that you have to buy food from WalMart or you'll go broke buying it at truck stops. With food in the cooler, I found that I tended to eat whenever I was bored. Let's face it - I'm bored all the damn time out here. So the cooler was tossed and I began stopping for food, usually at truck stops, whenever I was hungry. This seems to be a more effective approach for me. Things might be slightly more expensive but it's really not that noticeable. I wasn't exactly a thrift store shopper back home anyway. The chances are pretty good that I still spend less than I used to spend.

That 'no cooler, no food' thing bites me in the ass every once in a while. I awoke this morning and found that I was still #2 on the board. The chick who delivered before I did yesterday was still parked nearby. A junior gumshoe might then deduce that she was #1 on the board at the time. In any event I was damn hungry by the time this morning rolled around. Not my usual I'm a fat guy and I want a cheeseburger hungry. Oh no, this time was for real. I sat around all morning thinking that I should be given an assignment at any minute. Then (I thought), once I knew which way I was heading, I could stop for some food. By 11am, that assignment still hadn't come. Guessing game time; Should I go east or west? A brother's gotta eat at some point. I chose east, thinking that there was a better chance of my next load coming from that direction.

It turns out that the east vs. west drama never panned out. As soon as I went down the highway a few miles I saw a restaurant with truck parking. It was one of those places that the locals would probably swear to you is great. In point of fact the food was the same generic stuff that they serve at every greasy spoon. That was good enough for me though. Starvation avoided.

Back to the waiting game... I drove back over to the gravel parking area where I spent the night. After a couple of hours I still hadn't received an assignment and I was still #2 on the board. Well isn't that just special? By this time I was getting to be in need of something to drink and, more importantly, what they refer to in these parts as el baño. I'll piss in the trees with the best of them, but eat a greasy breakfast and, well, you know, it gets a little more complicated. Gotta find a potty.

Back to the east we went. Hey, what do you know? It turns out that there's a gas station with a diesel island in that little town as well. I did my business and loaded up on beverages. I grabbed some SubWay for later while I was at it, since my confidence in the freight situation was teetering around zero today. Might as well be prepared this time around. Back over to the good old gravel parking area...

I sat a while longer and started to wonder why they couldn't at least set me up with a ConWay relay or something to get me moving. Then my phone rang. "Joseph, do you know you have a load assignment?" asked the young lady. Nope. My truck was shut off so the Qualcomm thing was in some kind of power saving mode. I never got the message. In a business where it's best to have the truck shut off whenever possible, I consider this to be a design flaw, but I digress. She gave me the rundown on the ConWay relay to which I was being assigned and said that she needed to get me dispatched in order to process my layover pay. Good lookin' out, my sister.

After I turned the truck on, everything came through and I was dispatched to make a relay tomorrow at noon in Amarillo. (Glad I never actually got a chance to head east.) My layover pay notification followed closely behind. If we take the rules verbatim and do a thorough calculation of how soon I could legally have arrived at my consignee, I was owed $240 by this afternoon. The afternoon of the 2nd (legal arrival time) to this afternoon was five days of down time, with one day free, so 4 x $60 = $240. I'm not entirely sure what the information looks like on the other end, so I was pleased to see that $240 was paid today without me having to explain anything. Good lookin' out, my sister.

When I rolled into the Pilot in Amarillo this afternoon, I can't say that I was surprised to find the parking lot pretty damn full. Just something about this town. I got a spot way in the back though, so here I await tomorrow's run. I have to take it up to the ConWay yard outside Denver and then pray for a parking space at one of the local truck stops. We're still the bastard stepchildren of the ConWay 'family' apparently, as my directions to the yard specify that we're not allowed to park there. Tomorrow's run is 420-something miles, today's deadhead was 144 miles, and the $240 in layover pay covers a little more ground. All hope is not lost for this week just yet.

I've spent the last few nights in some pretty damn rustic environs. My internet connection speed has been exceptional in each of them. Now tonight I'm in a place that almost seems similar to an actual city. The freaking thing is working like one of those old 2400 baud modem connections to Prodigy or Compuserve. Weird.