1/18/10

Never, and I do mean never, underestimate the ability of a Norv Turner team to choke in a big game. As far as you Chargers fans out there are concerned, you can think of us Redskins fans as the dude who used to date your girlfriend. We've already seen the things that you'll start to figure out.

I swear that there is some sort of biometric sensor in my truck, allowing the Qualcomm unit to figure out when I'm trying to sleep. If I take a nap in the afternoon, then the messages come through in the afternoon. If I take a nap in the morning, then the messages come through in the morning. Today, after scooting through Virginia and Maryland before the sun came up, I was pretty exhausted. I got onto the Pennsylvania Turnpike and pulled into the service plaza near Bedford. Once I was solidly settled into dreamland - ATTENTION! YOU HAVE ONE UNREAD MESSAGE! I sat up and took a look. Something about Haiti. Back to bed.

After another 25 minutes I was just starting to drift away and then - ATTENTION!... Son of a... I got up and looked again. Okay, I couldn't be too mad about this one. My delivery appointment tomorrow is 8am instead of 7am. Given how I feel about mornings, that extra hour is certainly welcome news to me.

I've said it plenty of times here and my opinion hasn't changed - eleven hours of driving is way too much for one day. My latest data point comes from, well, today. From Doswell, Virginia to the service plaza outside Elkhart, Indiana. That's a long drive. The reason I drove so far today was that, had I stopped any sooner, I would have been forced to start even earlier tomorrow. Quite a devil's bargain for someone like me who (a) prefers to start work at 10am and (b) considers 400-500 miles on the road to be plenty for one day.

This is all, of course, just part of the job that I choose to do. It is interesting though in the context of the upcoming ruling from the feds. As much as I would have no trouble saying that ten hours of driving per shift is probably better than eleven, it wouldn't really make a whole lot of difference in real life under the current structure. The appointments would still fit. Drivers would just have to shut down an hour sooner one day and start driving an hour sooner the next day. Personally, I would just go with a 600 mile daily limit and a 3,500 mile weekly limit. Get rid of the asinine regulations that say I could spend ten hours in a strip club and then start driving again, perfectly legally, but I can't sleep for six hours and then get back on the road. If they just went with a mileage limit, they could ensure 100% compliance by pulling the odometer readings from the satellite unit at midnight and people could rest whenever they felt tired. Yeah, I know, my opinion and a dollar...

Setting aside the length of the trip, today's drive went about as well as can be expected. There were a few slow spots getting through the construction zones on I-495 but the rest of the route was pretty clear. The only weather to mention was a little bit of dense fog in one of Pennsylvania's valleys. No big deal though. It looks like I'll have around 30 miles to cover in the morning to reach my consignee in New Carlisle. From there, who knows? There tends to be plenty of freight in this part of the country but there also tend to be plenty of trucks in this part of the country. I would like to think that I won't get stuck setting up for a Con-way run leaving Gary or South Bend on Wednesday morning, but history suggests that I probably shouldn't get my hopes up.