2/27/10

A long, long time ago (yesterday), a gullible, idealistic sucker (me) said the following - "I'm inclined to think that tomorrow should go somewhat smoothly. Well, at least as smoothly as a day involving a stop in Joplin can go." I did hedge the statement a little with that second sentence, for whatever that's worth, but I now see that I was way too optimistic.

Nobody said anything about the cracked fender. That's pretty good, I guess. As the years go by though, I become more and more convinced that those guys in the inspection bay just make shit up as they go along. In addition to my worn drive tires, I had a steer tire that was wearing along the edge. It had lots of tread left, so I thought it was fine, but I can see where their concern was. So that got replaced. Then, the disparity in tread depth between the new steer tire and the remaining old steer tire was too great. So I got another new one. And something was wrong with the trailer and something about one of my slack adjusters. And, to round it all out, I needed some kind of greaser or something. Et tu, Pony Boy?

After dropping my trailer on the repair row, I saw that only one truck was waiting in line at the tire shop, so I decided to start there. It took a little longer to get through there than I had expected, but at least I wound up with four new tires instead of two or three. Decent trade-off. Then I checked in with the guy in the tractor shop. He said that I should check back at around 7pm. This would put me right on the borderline of being able to reach Pocahontas before my 14 hour clock ran out, but what are you gonna do? If something's broken, even if I've never heard of that 'something,' then I suppose someone has to fix it.

I rolled over to the vacuum and gave my floor a bit of what-for. Unfortunately though, I didn't have any foaming tire cleaner in my side box. Damn. I thought I had a can. So I had to use some kind of all-purpose cleaner instead. It worked okay, but it's not the same. My research department has developed a fool-proof way to get a clean floor that will repel dirt for at least... an hour or two.

From Page 682 of the Fenian Godfather Handbook:
1) Vacuum out all loose dirt.
2) Spray the floor with a liberal amount of tire foam.
3) Scrub with a stiff wire brush.
4) Vacuum out the resulting grimy sludge.

5) With the wire brush, scrub any spots that still appear dirty.
6) Re-spray the floor with tire foam.
7) Allow the foam to lift the dirt that was loosened in Step 5.
8) Vacuum out the dirty foam.
9) Repeat steps 5-8 if necessary.
10) Wipe with a clean and dry disposable shop towel.

That'll give you a clean floor every time, but today I had to work a little harder to achieve the desired outcome. Good enough.

As I was wrapping up my janitorial duties, I received a satellite message. I was hoping that it would be a note the from the tractor shop, wondering why my truck wasn't parked where it belonged. It wasn't. The message was from the trailer shop, informing me that my trailer was ready and waiting.

I've been hanging around for a while and it's now 5:35pm. Nobody has come to get my truck yet, so I don't think that 'rolling by 7pm' thing is gonna happen. I guess I'll try to sleep for a while and maybe roll out once I've been here for ten hours. There's still plenty of time to reach Michigan by Monday morning. It's just not entirely clear yet how I'll go about it.

The pay week wraps up with 2,368 miles plus $120 in layover pay, so all in all we'll have to call it a productive one. I made a few dollars, made my annual pilgrimage to this freaking place, and got some things fixed up on my little black truck along the way.