4/24/09

An open letter to the Washington Redskins: I beseech you; Do not mortgage what little is left of your future to move up and take a quarterback whose college experience consists of one (somewhat inconsistent) season as a starter. Please. Pretty please?

So the strategy today was to get up early, beat the traffic through St. Louis, and haul ass for Kansas in hopes of forcing the issue and getting another assignment before the weekend. When the alarm went off bright and early, this strategy sounded horrible. Going back to bed was clearly a better option. I bucked up though and headed west, making it out into the middle of Missouri before the traffic started to get heavy. Beauty.

I wasn't in the mood to deal with any tolls today so I angled down out of Kansas City and then caught U.S. 50 to the west toward McPherson. Gotta love those 65mph two-lanes in Kansas. I got to the consignee sooner that I had expected, even as I had to fight through some pretty hefty gusts between the amber waves of grain. My nice light 10,000 pound load was a bonus in Missouri's hills but probably more of a liability once I got into the wind.

I checked in at the consignee and crossed my fingers. The paperwork said that the delivery was scheduled for April 27th and my dispatch was for midnight at the end of the 26th. They told me to drop my trailer and grab an empty. Beauty. Then the empty was nowhere to be found and I had to go back over and have them assign another. No biggie there, I suppose.

That second empty was on the lot, but someone had been kind enough to leave me with a bad amber turn signal light on the left side of the trailer. I happened to have one of those on hand from a previous situation. On the previous go-around, the new light didn't do the trick (so I kept it). Today, the new light was just what the doctor ordered. By the time I got everything else checked over, I had received my next assignment. Gotta love it when a rare show of initiative pays off for me.

The next pickup will be tomorrow morning in Winfield and then I'll head to Denver for a Monday morning delivery. Given the bizarre directions to the consignee, I dialed up the address on Google Earth. Yeah, this one will be a treat. It's one of those old buildings in the middle of a residential neighborhood. I'm supposed to park on the street and then "go find someone." From that point, who knows? I don't see any kind of dock area. Should be pretty entertaining at 7am on a Monday. I think I'll be able to get off the road pretty early tomorrow and watch Messrs. Cerrato and Snyder gut my favorite NFL team one more time. At least I have my Wings.