5/20/09

If you live in Central Florida and have a hard time getting going in the morning, I think I have the solution for you. Stop by the Pilot in Wildwood and grab a quick shower. You'll be wide awake. I felt like Sylvester Stallone at the police station in First Blood.

My trip down to the shipper this morning was as quick and easy as expected. The sun was out for a bit too. I'll be damned. There was a camper flipped over right before my exit but I think it had just happened, since there wasn't a real long backup yet. The part of the wreck that stood out to me was that the ass end of the truck pulling the camper was about four feet off the ground, supported by a trailer hitch that never let go. That's pretty impressive. I would have thought that the hitch would have come disengaged by that point.

I got my 47,000 pounds of bottled water in Zephyrhills and then headed back northward. When I opened my side box to grab a strap to secure my load before leaving the shipper, a bunch of paper towels fell out. That was pretty funny. I'm not sure how I forgot about the paper towels, but I did. Once I got on the highway the rain came back, right on cue, but I-75's traffic held up much better than I-95's did under the same conditions. Then I caught I-10 westward and got to Midway before parking for the night. My delivery is set for 6:30am in Quincy so this is about as close as I could get. Ten miles or so in the morning won't be too bad and this Pilot is actually a pretty nice one. Plus I got my Italian BMT with double meat for dinner tonight. Beauty. Haven't had one of those in a few days.

Along the way I got green PrePass lights to bypass both Florida scales. I'm pretty sure that my axle weights are legal. I didn't feel like stopping at a CAT Scale today though, so I was rolling the dice. I usually get green lights in Florida and today was no exception. Beauty. And that wasn't the only good news.

I'm pretty sure that it's going to be hard to be in a bad mood as long as I have all of these napkins and paper towels in my truck. I have no idea why, but it makes me chuckle every time I look behind me. The planner dudes in Joplin did their part to help keep my spirits high as I was driving today though, just in case. Once I'm empty tomorrow, I'll be picking up a load in Quincy and running it down to Clewiston for a Friday morning delivery. And yet it gets better. It turns out that my dinner sandwich wasn't the only double stack today. I have another assignment tacked on after the Clewiston delivery. I'll be picking up in Riviera Beach and heading for Texas. I don't recall all of the mileages off hand but I know that my week will get up somewhere around 2,300 miles once all is said and done. That's probably about as good as I could have done if I had kept the Illinois run so I guess all is forgiven once again. To the unknown powers that be who made this possible - good lookin' out, my brothers/sisters/whatever.

For no obvious reason I'm going to toss in this link tonight just because I think it's freaking awesome. 2,000 movies on one DVD... sweet. Five years ain't that long, is it?

Oh, and it's about to start raining again.