2/5/10

A 50/50 split on the Super Bowl poll so far? That's what I like to see. Gear up for battle! The folks at PPP are convinced that there's a political connection, but I think they might be reaching a little on that one. Independents trend with Republicans in partisan matters these days (counter to the football results) and, when 46% of people don't care who wins, you're working within a weak subset from the start. But the important poll is right here, baby. 50/50 going into the weekend.

There weren't a whole lot of expectations for today in the life of your humble blogger, so it comes as no surprise that those expectations were easily exceeded. Aside from the fact that traffic in El Paso was moving at roughly the speed of a one-armed person swimming the backstroke, the morning drive overall was pretty decent. Of course, there's the ever-present issue of fine lines. As in - There's a fine line between a scenic sunrise coming over the mountains and a giant ball of helium burning its way through your eye sockets. It went from 'Hey, this is pretty nice' to 'Holy shit, I can't see' in a matter of seconds. The trouble passed soon enough though.

I rolled into our yard and made my drop, then found myself on the board at #7. After a half hour or so, I was assigned to a new load and back to work. For the second time in a row, my load out of El Paso was already at the yard and it was heading eastward. No trips back into town or to the copper mine and no large amounts of unpaid mileage. Beauty.

I drove over and hooked to my trailer bound for Kentucky and then scooted out of town. I had 3.25 hours left under the 70 hour rule, so I was hoping to make it to the truck stop in Pecos within three hours. Then I could do my post-trip inspection and keep everything on good terms with the feds. It took three hours and four minutes to reach the truck stop. Close enough.

I can only work a total of six hours tomorrow, so I guess I have a nice morning of sleeping late in store. That'll be a welcome change of pace. Then eight hours on Sunday and eight more on Monday. I'm not sure if that will be enough to reach my destination in Nicholasville, Kentucky or not. I may have to put in a couple of hours on Tuesday morning in order to deliver by 7am, but we'll just have to see how that shakes out.

It's getting to be about time to replace the two drive tires that we kept back in November as well. I suppose I'll make a call to the road service guys tomorrow and see where they want me to go. If my impressions are correct, having new tread all around on the drives will gain me around 1-2 mph whenever I have my foot to the floor. Watch out world. I'm coming (at 65.4 mph or so) and... Hell's coming with me! Yeah.